CAUTION: LOW CLEARANCE

Say you're a Company Commander in the Army. On your desk is a Top Secret document. Into your office comes a young troop you happen to know has a Top Secret clearance. Can you slide that document across the desk, ask him to read it?

No.

Or, at least, not necessarily.

Look, I don't know everything there is to know about such matters, but in the Army I held a Top Secret clearance, which I needed to authenticate the presidential release of nuclear weapons. (I never had to actually do it. Far as I know, nukes haven't been authorized since the bombing of Nagasaki.)

Don't know everything, like I said, but I did learn the basics.

In the world of classified documents you need two things to get access to the good stuff: 1) a security clearance high enough to cover the rating on the document, and 2) a need to know.

Just having a clearance doesn't cut it. Reading that classified document has to be necessary for you to perform your assigned duties. A guy with a Top Secret clearance can't just romp through a room full of Top Secret docs and sample at will.

Now, let's say you're the President of the United States with a Top Secret document on your desk. Into the Oval Office waltzes a man without any security clearance whatsoever. But this guy is known to be an expert on some esoteric subject or other.  (That's why you sent for him, right?) Let's say you (as President) need this man's opinion on the material covered in the Top Secret document sitting atop the Resolute desk. Can you hand that guy the document and let him read?

Yes, you can.

You, as Commander in Chief, can make the determination that you have an overwhelming need to know what this guy will say after perusing that document. You can declassify the doc for this guy at this time in that room, just to get his input.

Note that the document is still classified Top Secret. That hasn't changed. You're just saying that in order for you to perform your duties as President, you need to let this guy, who has no security clearance, have the opportunity to read it.

It appears Donald Trump has misunderstood this process, that he has forgotten the very particular circumstances that have to prevail for him to summarily declassify highly sensitive materials.

He seems to have latched onto the perverse notion he can wrinkle his nose and declassify a room full of documents just so he can play with them at his leisure when he is no longer in office.

Now, it's easy to see how he may have made this mistake. His enormous ego tells him stories and he has no choice but to believe them. Why? Because all those stories enhance his delusion of what a great and powerful man he is.

For instance, his ego tells him he's a genius, and the fellow is so stupid he must agree. His defective brain is naturally positioned to believe this bizarrely unlikely cognitive assessment.

Trump has now been federally indicted for being the idiot he cannot avoid being.

(Is helpless idiocy a legal defense?)

As a result, Trump has to tell a new story, the one about how Biden's Department of inJustice is out to destroy him for political reasons. He has to say those people are deranged maniacs performing the greatest evil ever seen in the history of this country.

Trump either knows this to be true, or has come to realize he needs to pretend to know it. Either way, his supporters believe him.

And they can't help it, either. They are, after all, human beings, creatures who are stupid and crazy and unaware of it. Their heads are full of crap they know to be true, because everywhere they look they see what their idiot brains tell them is proof.

In this case, they can also enjoy a phalanx of prominent Republicans who go on TV to repeat Trump's dangerous lies.

Failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake says the corrupt Deep State will have to go through her and 75 million Trump followers to get at their beloved ex-president. (And she reminds us that most of these patriots are members of the NRA and therefore heavily armed.)

Unfortunately for her, Special Counsel Jack Smith has already gone through her like she was the ghost of a rancid fart.

It remains to be seen how many of the 75 million armed Trumpists will show up to bust their guy out of prison when the time comes (and perhaps kill him by accident in the process).

But maybe that bloody scenario won't be necessary. It's possible Donald Trump could cut a deal to avoid a trial altogether. What would that look like?

One big hot mess, that's what.

Not only would Trump have to admit (under oath) he's not the godlike being his ego insists he is, but any reasonable deal would need to include his agreeing to never seek public office again. Unfortunately, that would fit beautifully into the false narrative of political persecution he can't stop promulgating.

To avoid that hassle, maybe Trump's favorite judge could take it upon herself to dismiss the charges against him.

No problem with that, right?

I mean, it's not like the man faces any other legal jeopardy.

(Speaking of which: What of Trump's Bedminster Golf Club and the possibility of additional charges? The damning stuff mentioned in Jack Smith's Florida indictment has yet to rise to the level of actual charges. Such charges would have to be voted by a grand jury impaneled in New Jersey.)

To be fair, Judge Cannon might take this opportunity to cut ties with Trump, to demonstrate to one and all she has learned her lesson.

Or, even weirder, she might go out of her way to suck up to the prosecution, even run the risk of getting a conviction overturned in appeal because of bad decisions from the bench.

But not on purpose, right? Right? Because that would be diabolical....