We’ve often laughed at Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ willingness to lie and do so shamelessly for Trump. I myself have nicknamed her “the Princess of Lies.” But when I heard that she was running for governor of Arkansas, my mind turned back to her involvement in something that definitely wasn’t a laughing matter. In fact, in hindsight it stands as Trump’s worst outrage before the January 6 insurrection.
In January 2019, during the middle of that winter’s government shutdown, Pelosi was due to lead a congressional delegation to Afghanistan in order to visit troops stationed there. But on January 17, Trump wrote Pelosi to tell her that due to the shutdown, she would have to fly commercial. In true Trumpian fashion, he made the decision public. Sanders tweeted out Trump’s letter on the official @PressSec Twitter account (note that the Twitter archive has Kayleigh McEnany’s name on it because Ri-Chun Kayleigh was Trump’s last press secretary).
Even if you accept the argument that Pelosi should have stayed in Washington to find a way forward to end the shutdown, there was no defensible reason for Trump to make that letter public. Let’s say it nice and slow—you do not give advance notice that VIPs are flying into a war zone.
Pelosi had planned on flying commercial, but decided to call off the trip altogether after Trump’s own State Department advised her that with her travel plans now public, the risk to her safety and that of her delegation was too great. Pelosi was visibly shaken when she faced reporters later that day.
Can you blame her? When you’ve been in Congress since 1987 and have been a member of your party’s top leadership since 2001, you don’t expect to see a president act this recklessly.
It cannot be stated enough—Trump’s decision to publicize that letter was wrong, dangerous and potentially criminal. Even if Trump theoretically had the right to declassify it, this is a classic case of something that may be legal, but is unlawful. To my mind, it was absolutely an impeachable offense. After all, it was the very definition of an abuse of power. Indeed, I suspect the only reason he wasn’t impeached on the spot was because we were still in a shutdown, and the Democrats were still making the case they could govern.
God forbid that anything had befallen Pelosi and her team on that trip. Trump would have had blood on his hands. And so would Sanders. There is no doubt that Trump ordered her to release that letter. But Sanders could have and should have refused to comply. As they say, there is no such thing as obedience to an unlawful order. If you believe that Sanders didn’t know that releasing those plans was wrong and unlawful, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you. And yet, she did it anyway—even though she could have potentially been staring down the barrel of charges of being an accessory to second-degree murder or least manslaughter had anything befallen Pelosi.
I’m reminded of Adam Kinzinger’s statement in support of impeachment. He called the January 6 riot for what it was—“the Article II branch inciting a deadly insurrection against the Article I branch.” In hindsight, this is proof that Trump was perfectly willing to use the power of his office to launch an unlawful and criminal attack on Congress. And Sanders was complicit in it.
The fact Sanders would even think this is at all acceptable is evidence that she is no different from the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert. Sanders may be smarter than them, or at least hide her wingnuttery better than those two. But when it gets exposed in moments like this, Katy bar the door.
Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders told us who she really is when she released that letter. It shows someone who has no soul, no heart, and no conscience—and is unfit to clean a governor’s mansion, let alone serve there.