New revelations about Trump’s past lawlessness preview a disturbing future

New revelations about Trump’s past lawlessness preview a disturbing future

Paul Waldman — Read time: 4 minutes

Columnist

A year after he left the White House, more of former president Donald Trump’s misdeeds continue to come to light. And while presidential misconduct is always worthy of notice even in retrospect, for Trump it has particular importance. He is likely running again in 2024, and he could certainly win.

And for Trump, the wrongdoing of the past is a guide to the future, not just because he might repeat what he did before, but because he would be even worse.

The Post has published two new articles concerning Trump’s violations of the Presidential Records Act. This law requires that almost all documents involving the president must be preserved, because they belong to the country; there is a whole system in place to process and maintain these records.

But as president, Trump would routinely tear up documents. As The Post reports, “he did it all in violation of the Presidential Records Act, despite being urged by at least two chiefs of staff and the White House counsel to follow the law on preserving documents.”

While staffers from the White House Office of Records Management spent a good deal of their time trying to tape the shreds back together, in many cases Trump aides would put documents in burn bags and destroy them.

Trump improperly removed multiple boxes from the White House that were retrieved by the National Archives and Records Administration last month from his Mar-a-Lago residence because they contained documents and other items that should have been turned over to the agency.

The important point is that Trump was repeatedly told he was breaking the law, yet he continued to do it.

And this was not the only case. He and his administration repeatedly violated the Hatch Act, a law that puts a wall between government officials and partisan political activity. Not only did they break the law constantly, they proudly proclaimed that they would continue to do so.

When a government watchdog office documented Trump aide Kellyanne Conway’s repeated violations of the law and recommended she be fired, she said, “Blah, blah, blah … Let me know when the jail sentence starts.” It culminated in the mother of all Hatch Act violations, the 2020 Republican convention held at the White House, in which multiple administration officials participated in the marshaling of government resources to advertise the Republican Party.

“Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,” said then-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows when asked about the lawbreaking. It was even reported that “Some of Mr. Trump’s aides privately scoff at the Hatch Act and say they take pride in violating its regulations.”

As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) taught everyone during Barack Obama's presidency, there are norms (widely shared expectations of behavior) and rules (things you are required to do). Filibustering almost everything or refusing to allow the president’s Supreme Court nominee to even get a hearing violated norms, but not rules; much of McConnell’s success lay in saying, “Nobody’s ever done this before, but who’s going to stop us?”

But as we consider the possibility of another Trump presidency, it’s becoming clear that this is only part of the picture. There are norms and there are rules. Then there are laws, requirements written down in statute that we assumed everyone is bound to obey. And then, finally, there are laws that actually have teeth.

We seldom thought about this last distinction before the Trump presidency. We’re taught that the law is the law, and breaking it is a crime. When a White House lawyer says “We can’t do that; it’s illegal,” that’s supposed to end the discussion. But Trump showed us that isn’t the case.

At times such as these it’s useful to recall that absurd moment in early 2020 when Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) explained her vote to acquit Trump in his first impeachment by saying “I believe that the president has learned from this case" and "will be much more cautious in the future.” Collins’s mistake was assuming that Trump is an ordinary person who might feel shame or regret, or that being caught in wrongdoing might make him less likely to transgress in the future.

But when Trump receives no consequences for his misdeeds, his belief that laws that bind others simply don’t apply to him is reinforced. Yet when he does receive consequences — or is confronted with the mere possibility that he might — he is offended and aggrieved, and becomes obsessed with taking revenge on those who dared attempt to hold him accountable. Consider all of the times he whined that he was “being treated so unfairly.”

At the very least, we used to expect the administration to argue, when it breaks the law, that it hasn’t really done so. For instance, torture is illegal under both U.S. law and treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory, so when the George W. Bush administration designed and executed a system to torture terrorism suspects, it had lawyers fashion a ludicrous rationale claiming it wasn’t actually violating the law.

By contrast, Trump and his underlings didn’t even bother to say they weren’t violating the law. His ability to do so was a symbol of his power, proof that he had triumphed over those he considered inferior.

“I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” Trump famously said. Should he become president again, he will believe it only more fiercely, no matter what the law says. Where that belief will take him we cannot yet predict.