Who is the king of America? “The president is not a king,” Senator Amy Klobuchar told news channel on Sunday NBC. “And I want to add that the former president is not a king either.” The king, said Klobuchar, “is the law.” Every American should abide by it, no one is above it.
Klobuchar is one of many Democrats who reacted with horror this weekend to the vicissitudes surrounding the criminal investigation into Donald Trump. After his term in office, Trump has taken classified documents to his Florida home, which are required by law to be kept under security in “specific government buildings.” Trump may have violated the Espionage Act, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 10 years.
“If I want to see senator-classified documents, I have to go to a special room,” Klobuchar said, “I can’t even wear my Fitbit.”
From sensitive to state secret
Last Monday, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home and golf club, looking for documents he was not allowed to possess. In total, the FBI seized about 20 boxes of documents and several ring binders containing photographs. The search warrant and inventory list were released by the judge on Friday.
On Saturday, Democrats in the House of Representatives asked Avril Haines, the National Intelligence Director, to conduct a risk analysis: Could these documents have harmed the country? “Former President Trump may have put our national security at great risk,” Democrats Carolyn Maloney and Adam Schiff wrote in a letter. They want the US Congress to be given more information about the investigation in a secret briefing.
The classification of the seized documents ranges from sensitive to state secret. Many American media suggest, based on anonymous sources, that it concerns information about nuclear weapons. If that’s true, the threat to national security is “not to be overstated,” Democrats said.
‘Political witch hunt’
Donald Trump himself is said to have been excited about the FBI raid at first. The counter-reaction could unite and mobilize Republicans behind him, he thought. That could bring him closer to an election victory in 2024. His supporters and Republican supporters echoed his rhetoric about the inquest as a “political witch hunt.”
In the meantime, many Republicans have lowered their voices, since it became clear what the nature of some seized documents may be. “He has a lot of questions to answer,” Republican Congressman Mike Turner said on Sunday CNN. “No one is above the law.” Not Donald Trump, but neither does Attorney General Merrick Garland, Turner added immediately.
That rhetoric from Trump and his supporters is not without effect. The threats against the FBI are piling up. On Saturday, a group of armed Trump supporters gathered outside the FBI’s Phoenix, Arizona office.
Not returned
One of Trump’s lawyers appears to have signed a statement in June stating that all classified material in Mar-a-Lago had already been returned to the government, reported The New York Times on Saturday. That does not appear to be the case. Trump insists he is on the right side of history. He would have returned all seized documents before the end of his term as president.
Trump, meanwhile, accuses his predecessor Barack Obama of having “33 million pages” of government documents at home, most of which are secret. The National Archives immediately debunked that, stating that Obama transferred his entire presidential archive, as required by law.