The frenetic, frothing-at-the-mouth the left is engaging in is something to behold. Meatheads like Ron Reiner are willing to dive down into the darkest of rabbit holes to claim Trump has finally been caught with his finger in the nuclear cookie jar.

Crowning a lifetime of Criminality, Donald Trump led an armed mob to overthrow the United States Government then stole America’s nuclear secrets. An Indictment can’t come soon enough for this treasonous MF.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) August 12, 2022

Trump’s finally going to jail!

No, he’s not.

I wasn’t a federal prosecutor so I don’t know, and can’t guess what the Justice Department has planned, but as a common trial lawyer, my reading of the warrant inventory list tells me that what the Feds have cooked up is damn thin. A president has the plenary power to classify or declassify anything he wants. Just because the left hates Trump with the heat of a thousand suns doesn’t reduce Trump’s chief of the executive branch and Commander in Chief status.

Again, the classification statutes/regulations *do not apply* to the President of the United States.

He has the inherent constitutional power, as commander-in-chief, to classify and declassify anything he wants, in any manner he wants.

The Supreme Court reaffirmed this in 1987. https://t.co/bANCEhBTT1

— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) August 12, 2022

Apparently, the Justice Department felt descending on Mar-a-Lago in the dark of early morning, unannounced, was the only way to prevent Trump from burning the evidence, or flushing it down the toilet (I guess). The problem with an “exigent circumstances” assertion (requiring a warrant and raid) is that Trump has had the claimed documents for 19 months. Just as damning (and leading to a perception of bad faith) is that the warrant was signed last Friday at 12:12 p.m. It wasn’t executed for an additional three days. The claim that Trump might be about to sell nuclear secrets or nuclear secrets were left out on a table for his golf buddies to look over is absurd.

The criminal codes the Justice Department is claiming are impacted are:

• 18 USC § 793 – The Espionage Act. This statute “prohibits communicating, transmitting, or delivering to any person not entitled to receive it ‘any document, writing, … or note relating to the national defense,’ or attempting to do so.”
• 18 USC § 2071. This law prohibits the removal of “any record, proceeding, map, book, paper, document, or other thing, filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States, or in any public office. . .”
• 18 USC § 1519. This statute prohibits the destruction of “any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States.” As you can imagine, the press is giddy with allegations the former President violated the Espionage Act.

Owing to what we know to date, I find it hard to fathom how Trump could be criminally liable based on the aforementioned statutes.  Trump is not a common target. He’s a former president who had the final word on any classification of documents. Unless they have video of Trump passing nuclear secrets to North Korea, this seems to be a sham to search for J6 documents.

And finally – the statutes require intent. To suggest that Trump packed his own boxes and secreted away top secret documents related to the nation’s nuclear arsenal is about as believable as Trump smuggling a nuke named “Bigly Boy” out on Marine One.

I, for one, can’t wait for the “put up or shut up” stage.