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The Department of Justice (DOJ) revealed Friday that, through March, special counsel Jack Smith had spent about $9 million on his investigation of former President Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, and it stands to reason that the cost of the probe has gone up considerably in the intervening three months.
To people on the left, and anybody who has any interest in the rule of law, this must seem like money well spent. After all, you can’t put a price tag on showing people that not even a former president is above that law.
Chances are that folks on the right will feel much differently, especially because a probe of President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents has only cost about $1.2 million through three months.
Trump certainly does. On Friday night, he took to his social media platform Truth Social to air some grievances.
“Deranged Jack Smith, the wacko prosecutor that Corrupt Joe Biden and his Thugs stuck on me during the political campaign in which Biden is losing ‘BIG’ (an absolute No, No!), just announced that he has spent over 9 million dollars, already, on this continuing Witch Hunt,” he wrote. “Biden’s Special Prosecutor, by comparison, has spent almost nothing. Prosecutorial Misconduct for purposes of Election Interference!”
In the coming months, Americans are going to hear a lot about this “election interference” from Trump and his allies.
Some of it might even sound reasonable.
After all, it is true that DOJ is investigating Biden’s likely opponent in the 2024 election. Of course, what Trump et al. will conveniently forget to mention is that DOJ is also probing Biden himself, which seems like the weirdest witch hunt in history.
But there is one thing everybody must keep in mind when the former president and right-wing talking heads rail about “election interference,” the multimillion-dollar price tag of the investigation, and the discrepancy in prosecutorial expenditures.
This is a crisis entirely of Trump’s own making.
First, he removed boxes of documents that were not his to take, including dozens with various classified markings, from the White House.
Then, he was asked to return them, and he failed to comply or cooperate with the authorities. This, by the way, is where his case and those involving Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence begin to differ.
When it was discovered that they were in possession of classified documents, both Biden and Pence worked with the authorities to make sure those records were returned.
Not Trump.
He not only defiantly held on to the documents but, according to his indictment, he then proceeded to obstruct justice and, on top of that, even showed some of that classified information, which he was not supposed to have in the first place, to people who did not have the required security clearance.
So, whenever you hear Trump or his allies complaining about this probe, its costs, or that it amounts to “prosecutorial misconduct” and “election interference,” keep in mind that the former president only has himself to blame for things reaching this point.
