Tom Fitton’s advocacy has served no one’s interests; not yours, not Trump’s, and not the Republican Party’s. No one, save Tom Fitton and his organization.
Two of National Review’s keenest legal minds, Andrew McCarthy and Ed Whelan, have joined many other representatives of the conservative legal movement who remain tethered to objective statutory realities by raining reproof down on Judicial Watch’s Michael Bekesha over his faulty defense of the conduct that resulted in Donald Trump’s federal indictment.
Bekesha argued in the pages of the Wall Street Journal that Trump’s indictment is fatally flawed because his conduct is covered by the Presidential Records Act and its judicial precedents — specifically, those that pertain to a post-presidential case against Bill Clinton, which Bekesha argued against in the Court and lost. Andrew wrote that the PRA “explicitly excludes agency records from the definition of ‘presidential records,’” and the statute pertains only during a president’s term in office. It is not retroactive, which renders it a strange defense against actions that Trump allegedly admitted on tape occurred after he left office.
Indeed, the degree to which Bekesha emphasized his organization’s efforts to expose malfeasance at the Justice Department gave his Journal article the feel of a veiled fundraising solicitation on Judicial Watch’s behalf. That was no accident.
Trump seemed to be profoundly influenced by Bekesha’s argument. At least, that’s the impression viewers of Trump’s June 13 speech before a friendly audience at his club in Bedminster, N.J., hours after his arraignment. In that address, Trump emphasized the “absolute right” he claimed the PRA confers upon a president to all executive documents subject only to the president’s personal discretion.
According to the Washington Post’s reporting, which is based on the confessions of “seven Trump advisors with knowledge of the probe,” Trump reportedly overruled his lawyers, who advised the former president to seek an arrangement with the Justice Department. Instead, Trump deferred to the advice of Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, who claimed that the PRA provided him with an iron-clad defense:
Trump would often cite Fitton to others, and Fitton told some of Trump’s lawyers that Trump could keep the documents, even as they disagreed, the advisers said … Multiple witnesses said they were asked about Fitton in front of a grand jury and the role he played in Trump’s decisions. . . . Several other Trump advisers blamed Fitton for convincing Trump that he could keep the documents and repeatedly mentioning the “Clinton socks case.” . . . Judicial Watch lost a lawsuit in 2012 that demanded the audio recordings be designated as presidential records and that the National Archives take custody of the recordings.
It turns out that Bekesha’s op-ed was a solicitation of sorts. It represented an effort to popularize a facile argument in the court of public opinion that is highly unlikely to survive scrutiny in courts of law. In deferring to Fitton’s advice over that of his attorneys, Trump has exposed himself to serious legal jeopardy. So, how is Fitton handling the attention he is receiving today as the author of what may prove a legally fatal misjudgment on Trump’s part? By capitalizing on it, of course!
Now that "Tom Fitton" is trending, be sure to subscribe at @TomFitton! pic.twitter.com/IRX0eJyDrW
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) June 15, 2023
As an example of the long con targeting honest and sincerely concerned conservative voters over the course of the Trump years, this is pristine. Tom Fitton’s advocacy has served no one’s interests; not yours, not Trump’s, and not the Republican Party’s. No one, save Tom Fitton and his organization.
Sadly, this is no coda to the grift that predated the rise of Trump and continues to bilk right-leaning voters out of their hard-earned income while setting them up for failure. The grift will go on.