Now that the Justice Department has indicted the former President on 31 counts of “willful retention” of classified documents, the Republican propaganda machine is going wild. Of interest to members of the LDS Church should be the vastly differing responses of Utah’s two Republican senators.
Mitt Romney
Like all Americans, Mr. Trump is entitled to the presumption of innocence. The government has the burden of proving its charges beyond a reasonable doubt and securing a unanimous verdict by a South Florida jury.
By all appearances, the Justice Department and special counsel have exercised due care, affording Mr. Trump the time and opportunity to avoid charges that would not generally have been afforded to others.
Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself by not only taking classified documents, but by refusing to simply return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.
These allegations are serious and if proven, would be consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest, such as withholding defensive weapons from Ukraine for political reasons and failing to defend the Capitol from violent attack and insurrection.
Mitt Romney, June 9, 2023
This sounds to me like the constitutional standard of American justice with a bit of Mormonism mixed in. He starts with the “presumption of innocence” and mentions the prosecution’s legal “burden of proof” “beyond a legal doubt.” This is the normal standard for all legal proceedings in America. I am quite sure the Justice Department is well aware of it’s responsibilities and has taken great care in investigating this unprecedented case.
I believe Romney’s religious roots show through in the third paragraph when he says, “Mr. Trump brought these charges upon himself” and refused “to return them when given numerous opportunities to do so.” In other words, Trump used his agency to take the documents and refused multiple opportunities to repent and make things right. In LDS theology, freely choosing to do wrong and then stubbornly refusing to repent, means that a person inevitably will be judged and face consequences.
Mike Lee
Mike Lee, on the other hand, took a political attack approach.
The Biden administration’s actions can only be compared to the type of oppressive tactics routinely seen in nations such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, which are absolutely alien and unacceptable in America. It is an affront to our country’s glorious 246-year legacy of independence from tyranny, for the incumbent president of the United States to leverage the machinery of justice against a political rival. Such an act of absolute disrespect echoes despotism, making it fundamentally at odds with American democratic values.
Mike Lee, June 9, 2023
Lee wants to blame Trump’s legal problems on anything other than Trump’s own actions. This denial of guilt and attempt to shift blame does NOT sound like Mr. Lee’s religious roots – which are supposedly the same as Mr. Romney’s. Mr. Lee is attempting to politicize a careful, detailed, legal process that took nearly a year.
Here is an important fact that Mike Lee ignores. President Biden (unlike his predecessor) has always stayed completely out of Justice Department business. Biden has had nothing whatsoever to do with this indictment. In making the allegations that he made in his statement above, Mike Lee is literally bearing false witness against Joe Biden.
Perhaps Mike Lee, who prides himself on having a copy of the Constitution in his pocket, ought to reread the Ten Commandments.
Sources:
Josh Gerstein, “The Startling, damning, details in the Trump indictment,” Politico, June 9, 2023.
Politico Staff, “Trump’s 2nd indictment: Read the full document text,” Politico, June 9, 2023.
Suzanne Bates and Gitanjali Poonia, “Utah Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney have different reactions to news of Trump indictment,” Deseret News, June 9, 2023.
Exodus 20:16
100% agree!
Interesting. I accepted Jack Smith’s invitation to the American public to read the Indictment, and given that legal documents are usually not thrilling reading, I found it exceedingly clear and astonishing. Nuclear secrets stored next to a toilet in a venue that had over 150 public events? Even from “Grab ’em by the ” intimate bits, even from the “I want to you to me a favor” guy, even from “I could shoot someone on the street and would not lose any votes” guy, even from the 25,000 lies guy, the “Lock her up!” guy, the one who lied about the danger of the pandemic so as to not lose votes (never mind the million dead), and the insurrection guy, even after all years of outrageous behavior, I was still astounded.
What is most interesting about Trump’s radical defenders is that so many spoke up before the indictment was released, and how so few have seriously addressed, or even mentioned, the factual claims. Just as Trump’s overall behavior is startlingly congruent with Nibley’s “Victorosa Loquasitas: The Rise of Rhetoric and the Decline of Everything Else,” so the Republican defense resembles Nibley’s 1953 “The Unsolved Loyalty Problem”, the “one package loyalty” section in which “Just as all obedient subjects are embraced in a single shining community, so all outsiders are necessarily members of a single conspiracy of evil,” (Nibley, The Ancient State, 210.)
The party of “Law and Order” has, by blindly following Trump, become the party of “Lies and Dishonor.”
I think it interesting that Romney has honored his father who as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development actually stood up to Pres. Nixon in honoring the law for equality in housing. Lee on the other hand seems to have become a law unto himself completely dishonoring the legacy his father left for him.
If Religion is recognition of the values of right and wrong and politics is the means by which we regulate these values then it is apparent by Lee’s politics that he’s turned his back on his religion.