Indict Trump Aide Nauta? Why Not These Big Liars First?

By Victor Davis Hanson via The Daily Signal | June 15, 2023

Walt Nauta is a 10-year veteran of the Navy and served as an aide to former President Donald Trump both in and out of office.

Special counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly “making false statements in interviews with the FBI.” The indictment’s subtext is that Nauta refused to cooperate with—and turn state’s evidence to—the special counsel in its efforts to convict Trump.

But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?

Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?

After all, when Smith announced his indictments of Trump, he lectured America on the rule of law and the cherished notion that no one is above it.

So, let us start with the former interim director of the FBI itself, Andrew McCabe.

McCabe admittedly lied four times about his illegally leaking sensitive information to witnesses and mishandling classified information.

Have those crimes suddenly ceased being felonies?

Or is it now the policy of the United States government that an FBI director can lie with impunity, and leak, and mishandle sensitive classified information?

Yet, Nauta may be sent to prison while McCabe will continue to earn a fine salary at CNN as a paid “expert” to deplore … what exactly? What McCabe knows best from his own experience with the deed—the “mishandling of classified information.”

Nauta reportedly is being indicted for claiming he “did not know” what he supposedly did know in relation to the movement of the president’s papers.

His denial was proffered with nearly the exact phraseology that another former FBI director, James Comey, used under oath when he stonewalled congressional inquisitors on 245 occasions.

Was the ex-FBI director ever indicted for feigning ignorance or amnesia before Congress?

Did Nauta ever record a private, and likely classified, conservation he had with the president of the United States in the White House, and then leak it to The New York Times?

That is precisely what James “Higher Loyalty” Comey bragged about doing.

Most recently, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm admitted that she, too, recently lied while under oath to Congress when she denied owning private stocks.

Was Nauta’s “I don’t know” a greater threat to the rule of law and the security of the republic than the lies of the secretary of energy? She deliberately misled Congress about potential conflicts of interest involving her stock portfolio.

Then we come to President Joe Biden. He has sworn that he never discussed business with his son, Hunter Biden, currently under suspicion for tax improprieties and leveraging foreign governments by selling them supposed Biden influence.

Yet plenty of witnesses have contradicted Joe Biden’s statement. Photos even reveal him side by side with his son’s business associates.

For nearly 20 years, Senator, Vice President, private citizen, and now President Biden has concealed the fact he unlawfully took classified documents home and moved them about in various unsecured locations.

Was Biden’s movement of classified documents for the past 20 years less egregious than what Nauta is accused of having done?

Was Biden’s Corvette garage more secure than the closets and bathrooms inside the Mar-a-Lago gated estate?

Biden’s lawyers, after nearly two decades, only came forward because of the media hype surrounding the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents.

Is there some law that states that a senator, vice president, and president can improperly remove classified documents, move them about to various unsecured locations, and avoid the sort of felony indictments now facing Nauta and Trump?

Let us end with the greatest exemptions of all; namely, those accorded to Hillary Clinton.

She has variously committed the following likely major felonies:

• One, she illegally transmitted classified information involving national security over her own unsecure server while serving as secretary of state.

• Two, she destroyed both email records and communication devices that were under government subpoena.

• Three, she was untruthful about both the use and destruction of said subpoenaed items.

• Four, she illegally hired a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to work on her campaign as an opposition researcher.

• Five, she conspired to disseminate false documents among top government intelligence and investigatory agencies as well as the media for the sole purpose of destroying her presidential opponent Trump and thereby warping the 2016 election process.

And?

Clinton—like self-confessed liars or dissimulators John Brennan, former CIA director; James Clapper, former director of national intelligence; and former FBI Directors Comey and McCabe—was exempted from all legal jeopardy. She, too, continues to monetize her past notorieties and controversies.

The last thing this country needs is another bottled-piety lecture on the rule of law from special counsel Smith, Biden, and the array of admitted lying former high government officials.

They, not Nauta, should be ashamed.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and author of the book "The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won." You can reach him by e-mailing authorvdh@gmail.com.

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