Mr. Trump and his defenders argue that the indictment against him is politically motivated. They argue that he is being prosecuted for retaining classified government documents even though President Biden and Vice President Mike Pence also were found to have some classified documents in their possession after they left office. In Mr. Biden’s case, his personal attorneys came across classified documents from his time as vice president in a locked closet in his office at the Penn Biden Center. After additional searches, more documents were found in his Wilmington, Del., home. Mr. Pence’s personal lawyers found classified documents in his Indiana home; a search by the F.B.I. turned up additional documents with classification markings.
The key difference between the legal situations of Mr. Biden and Mr. Pence and that of Mr. Trump is not politics. Rather, the difference lies in what they did once they discovered the classified materials: Mr. Biden and Mr. Pence immediately notified the federal government, turned over the documents, and fully consented to thorough F.B.I. searches of their personal offices and residences. They did not willfully retain documents that they knew they had no legal right to keep, and they certainly did not undertake elaborate schemes to mislead their own lawyers or the government in order to conceal and hold the documents. The special counsel working on Mr. Biden’s case has not yet announced whether he will pursue charges, but the Justice Department has closed the case against Mr. Pence, announcing just days before the Trump indictment was filed that no criminal charges will be sought.
What about Hillary Clinton? Mrs. Clinton was the subject of chants at Trump rallies during the 2016 presidential campaign after it came to light that she had sent and received classified information on a private email server while serving as secretary of state. Unlike Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton had the right to see the documents in question; she was in office at the time and was cleared to see the most sensitive classified materials. The concern instead was that she had made classified information vulnerable by sharing it over an unclassified server and then deleted thousands of emails in what some saw as an attempted cover-up.
An F.B.I. investigation found that out of 30,000 emails sent to the State Department, 110 emails in 52 email chains contained classified information. Eight of the chains contained information at the top secret level. But only “a very small number” of the emails contained classification markings that would have signaled the presence of classified information. Announcing that no charges would be brought, James Comey, the F.B.I. director at the time, stated that Mrs. Clinton and her colleagues were “extremely careless” in handling classified information but that the F.B.I. had not found clear evidence that she “intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information.” Not only is Mr. Trump on tape discussing a classified document he knew he had no legal right to possess, but he also repeatedly attempted to play a shell game with classified documents to keep them out of the government’s hands.
Unless Mr. Trump pleads guilty (which seems very unlikely), it will be up to a jury to determine his guilt. But the picture that emerges from the indictment is of a man who never really took seriously the responsibility he had as president to preserve and defend the national security of the United States. When he was president, it was reported that he rarely read his daily brief, yet the indictment reveals that once out of office, he hoarded some of our country’s most important national secrets, trotting them out on occasion as if they were party tricks.
Those who are describing this indictment as Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida did, as “the weaponization of federal law enforcement,” misunderstand the situation that Jack Smith, the special counsel who was appointed to investigate the case, faced. Those who say Mr. Trump should have been allowed to get away with putting U.S. national security at risk have claimed that he is not receiving equal treatment under the law. But that is, in fact, what Mr. Trump is getting.