During a Fox News interview, Rep. Steve Scalise tried to defend the twice-impeached, twice-indicted former President by saying, "If his name was Donald Smith, would this be happening?" Of course not, you silly goose, because Donald Smith didn't violate the Espionage Act. Donald Trump did.
And he should talk to Reality Winner about how average Americans go straight to jail for more minor offenses related to classified documents. Her sentence, 63 months in prison after pleading guilty to violating the Espionage Act, was the longest to be imposed in federal court for an unauthorized release of government information to the media.
Reality Winner was trying to save democracy. Trump tries to destroy democracy.
Trump could have pardoned her:
"If his name was Donald Smith, would this be happening?" he asked.
"And I think most people recognize, no, there's a different level of treatment because a lot of people have just said they want to just target Donald Trump," Scalise said. "You know, Joe Biden, we've got so much coming out on the Biden family, millions of dollars going through shell corporations."
"James Comer's committee has been exposing a lot of that," he lied. "You don't hear anything out of those agencies."
"You look at Hillary Clinton's server and other people that have handled classified documents," he added.
So, there's a big difference between the two cases, Mr. Scalise, sir.
Via The Washington Post:
Notably, however, the indictment does not charge Trump with the illegal retention of any of the 197 documents he returned to the archives.
That shows that if Trump had simply returned all the classified documents he had, he probably never would have been charged with any crimes, said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor.
His whataboutisms nearly gave me whiplash. As for Comer, he's been coming up empty at every turn.
