Editor’s note: John Avlon is a CNN senior political analyst and anchor. He is the author of “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
“In my administration, I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”
That’s what then-candidate Donald Trump said at a campaign rally in August of 2016. This was the alleged policy behind chants to “lock her up!” directed at Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her off-site email server. They were calls for political vengeance without due process.
But now, with former President Trump indicted by the federal government on 37 counts for retaining and concealing classified documents related to national security – including nuclear secrets – key Trump supporters ditched calls for accountability and have resorted to threats of violence. This is the politics of incitement and intimidation and it cannot be allowed to succeed.
Trump has reached for apocalyptic rhetoric, calling for his supporters to protest at the Florida courthouse when he is arraigned on Tuesday.
Rep. Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican and one of the chief promoters of the “stop the steal” election lie that led to the January 6 attack on the Capitol tweeted: “We have now reached a war phase. Eye for an Eye.”
Failed Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake declared at a Georgia Republican rally: “I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media … If you want to get to President Trump, you’re going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA. That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”
Just to be clear, that is a threat. After having her election lies rejected by court after court, Lake should know that just because you say something doesn’t make it true.
But the response to an absence of facts is often simply to scream louder – and some MAGA backers have heard the warlike rhetoric loud and clear, responding with online chatter about a second civil war.
The threats of violence reflect an authoritarian impulse completely at odds with the alleged principles of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. After all, this is a political party that has long claimed to stand for patriotism, individual responsibility, family values and the rule of law. They are risking abandoning it all to protect a cult of personality for a political con man whose actions are the opposite of all those virtues.
There’s a deeper twist: Conservatism literally began in reaction to the threat of mob violence.
Edmund Burke’s condemnation of the violent excesses of the French Revolution is generally considered to be the starting point of conservative thought. Attacking the US Capitol in response to the election lies of a leader who says things like “I alone can fix it” is the opposite of anything resembling Republican virtues or conservative principles.
But conservative populists are a different breed, especially when they use fear to encourage retaliatory strikes. “Aggressive defensiveness” is the term for the kind of threats being leveled: using defensive feelings as an excuse to get aggressively violent.
They were a recurring feature in the reaction to Reconstruction after the Civil War – as I discuss in my book ”Lincoln & The Fight for Peace” – when White vigilante groups would claim that someone attacked them and use that threat (or more broadly, the demographic “threat” of multiracial democracy) as a pretext to slaughter their political opponents and intimidate the opposition into silence.
This is not a distant concern relegated to history books. The January 6 attack showed the clear and present danger created by apocalyptic rhetoric and the politics of incitement. The threat of violence was a feature, not a bug, in the effort to get senators to stop the certification of the election.
It was the culmination of years of violent rhetoric deployed by the former president and his surrogates and amplified without any supporting evidence by right-wing networks. Two militia leaders – from the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys – have been convicted of seditious conspiracy for what they did after hearing Trump falsely declare the 2020 election had been stolen from him.
Given the history of violence aimed at the heart of our democracy, these latest threats should be easy to condemn – especially for Trump’s Republican rivals in the 2024 primaries.
With the exception of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who said that if the indictment is proven to be true, Trump’s actions were “extremely reckless”) and Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson – both former US attorneys – Trump’s GOP rivals have all tried to criticize the process or the optics without addressing the substance of the indictment.
That’s presumably a political calculation made out of fear of offending Trump’s base. It’s also an implicit recognition, however, that the details of the indictment are damning to the point of absurdity.
There are photos of boxes of classified documents stacked in a chandeliered bathroom at Mar-a-Lago; there is a transcript of a taped conversation in which Trump discusses how he is in possession of classified documents and cannot declassify them because he did not do it as president.
Every defense that Trump and his surrogates once offered has been revealed by the evidence to be a lie. Trump is known to even have lied to his own lawyers. But sadly, many of his supporters still believe he is telling them the truth.
The candidates presumably know better – but they keep retreating to weak-kneed responses. One recurring theme is the false belief that the DOJ was inconsistent with its indictment. Let’s clear this up, because a cursory review of the Trump charges should mean an end to whataboutism.
Both Hillary Clinton and former Vice President (and current GOP presidential candidate) Mike Pence, in their cases regarding retention of classified information, were not charged because they cooperated with the authorities and no deliberate mishandling was found. Biden’s case is ongoing but he has also cooperated with authorities.
Here’s the key difference: Trump was not charged for having the classified documents but for willfully trying to hide the documents after the feds enquired. It’s not the crime, but the cover-up. Even conservative legal analysts ranging from Jonathan Turley to Andrew McCarthy to former Attorney General Bill Barr have read the indictment and pronounced it damning to Trump, with Barr saying: “The counts under the Espionage Act, that he willfully retained those documents, are solid counts … it’s a very detailed indictment, and it’s very, very damning.”
One final line of defense argues that democracies don’t indict former presidents – that this action makes America look like a “third world” nation. Never mind the fact that democracies like France, Italy and Israel have done just that in recent years when their former heads of state were accused of committing high crimes. In fact, it’s an essential feature of accountability and showing no one is above the law. The Washington Post offered an excellent round-up of some of these recent cases. This is necessary in a country like the United States where sitting presidents cannot be charged with a crime.
When facts and reason no longer apply, desperate individuals resort to threats of violence. It is an attempt to intimidate in the belief that the rule of law will be suspended. This is thuggery and more evidence that the January 6 playbook remains in effect for Trump and his apologists.
But facts matter, and there is nothing unfair about equal justice under law, applied without fear or favor. That is what Trump is really afraid of.