Trump is facing four indictments. Wyomingites should be paying attention.

Time passes; other tragedies occur. It’s tempting to ignore the myriad classified document-related felonies alleged in Florida against former President Donald Trump. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, already reversed on quixotic pretrial rulings, seems unworried. We should be, though. National security is everyone’s concern.

In 2016, Trump rally goers bellowed “Lock her up!” after then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton admitted using an unsecured email server. The Department of Justice investigated exhaustively but, as Politico’s Garrett M. Graff reported in 2017, found “less a sinister and carefully calculated effort to avoid transparency than a busy and uninterested executive” working with people and systems that hadn’t “caught up with … the digital age.” 

Disorganized? Yes. Criminal? No. 

The Florida indictment against Trump, known as a speaking indictment, is different altogether. On June 8, Trump was charged with criminal conspiracy and gross mishandling of hundreds of classified and sensitive materials. A superseding indictment filed July 27 added new charges — that he lied to investigators, asked a staffer to delete Mar-a-Lago camera footage to obstruct the investigation and willfully retained national defense information.

Speaking indictments are specifically meant to be read by anyone. Do, and remember that everything requires proof beyond reasonable doubt and that the accused isn’t obliged to testify. Draw your own conclusions about Trump’s exposure of national secrets and his treatment of materials implicating America’s safety. 

Don’t rely on our Congresswoman Harriet Hageman’s explanation of the June 8 indictment. Before it was even unsealed, she declared it “ridiculously weak” and “doubly thin,” whatever that meant. This from someone who once sought to keep Trump from the presidency, but is now among his most enthusiastic supporters. Wyoming’s two U.S. senators, meanwhile, both criticized the indictment as political persecution, with Sen. John Barrasso calling it “rotten.”

A contemporaneous 2023 ABC/Ipsos poll showed three in five people considered the original Florida charges serious. Half thought the accused’s campaign should pause. Maybe they’d seen the pictures of boxes of classified materials strewn around Mar-a-Lago.

Another federal indictment was filed last year in Washington, D.C. regarding Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. It’s paused while the Supreme Court decides whether former presidents have immunity from criminal prosecution. Lower courts have expeditiously answered “no” to this simple question. Experts predict the Supreme Court will eventually concede that nobody is above the law. 

Trump was also indicted twice in state courts in 2023. Georgia officials brought an election subversion case charging him and 18 others; several have already pleaded guilty. Legal skirmishes have ensued. Some felony counts against him were dismissed, the lead prosecutor was not disqualified, but that ruling is appealable. She wants the trial to start Aug. 5.  

In New York, there are the “hush money” charges. He’s accused of falsifying business records with intent to conceal illegal conduct connected to his 2016 presidential campaign. State prosecutors have recently received loads of federal discovery documents and given them to the defense. Trial is set to begin April 15.  

National security is implicated in another New York proceeding, a civil fraud case in which Trump’s now a “judgment debtor.” Nearly half a billion dollars are at stake. He recently got the amount of the appeal bond reduced by millions, but this self-proclaimed “really rich” guy hasn’t yet found enough cash or a legitimate institution to back it. If the judgment isn’t secured, the prosecutor can direct New York sheriffs to quickly seize debtor assets to satisfy it. 

If China or Saudi Arabia, with whom he’s admittedly had financial dealings before, provide bond money, alarm bells about national security should ring loudly. Same with Putin, whom Trump admires but who isn’t exactly fond of America. The last thing any patriotic American should want is for one of our political leaders, even a former one, to be beholden to America’s opponents. It’s a matter of loyalty to the country.

State legislators enthusiastically expressed similar attitudes when it adopted Wyoming’s official code in 2010, Wyo. Stat. §8-3-123(a). Among other directives for acceptable behavior, the code includes “ride for the brand” and “remember that some things are not for sale.” 

Trump maintains that all 88 pending criminal charges — spread among four cases in four courts — are merely ‘politically motivated.’ Some agree, but donor numbers are dropping and cartoonists lampoon him for spending millions in political donations on multilayered criminal defense. Well after Nikki Haley quit running March 6, she won 77,849 votes in Georgia’s primary. (In 2020, Biden carried Georgia by 11,779.) On March 20, Haley got 108,467 votes in the Arizona primary. (In 2020, Biden carried Arizona by 10,457.) 

Wikipedia says, and Wyomingites know, this state backed Trump’s previous bids like no other. Only former President Ronald Reagan’s ever done better. However, voters owe it to themselves, and to their country, to take an honest look at the Florida indictment, at least, before voting Nov. 5. If hanging onto and hiding secure documents and then bragging to others about possessing classified national defense information doesn’t threaten American security, I don’t know what does. Voters should ask themselves, does Trump’s alleged felonious behavior square up with the Western values that Wyomingites say we cherish? 

Ultimately, it will be in the courts of law, not in those of public opinion or even at the ballot box, where Trump’s reckoning will occur. There, his actions and inactions will be weighed and measured against the rule of law. He’s doing everything imaginable to delay the trials by jury he’s requested, but they’re looming. 

Four different juries of his peers — adult American citizens — will impartially hear the evidence and justly determine his culpability. Their verdicts will tell everyone a lot — about civics, in every sense of the word, and about national security, in every sense of that concept. I look forward to hearing from all four.