Perhaps the most telling sign, however, is the level of hysteria in Trump’s social media post on Monday. Let me quote his Truth Social screed in full to give an idea of his mental and emotional states — and keep in mind that, as usual, it is full of lies.

For the record, Trump is referring to documents with classified markings that were found in a D.C. office that Joe Biden used for a time after his vice presidency and at his home in Wilmington, Del., all of which were returned to the government after being discovered. The “1,850 boxes” reference is to Biden’s papers, mostly from his years in the Senate, which are housed at the University of Delaware, his alma mater — and which the FBI has indeed been allowed to examine.

It is easy to understand how a president or vice president, upon leaving office, could inadvertently end up with a few documents that should have gone to the National Archives under the Presidential Records Act. It is easy to understand how a president or vice president might forget having taken a few documents home to study, say, over a weekend.

What is hard to understand — and, to my mind, illegal — is for a departing president to deliberately take thousands of documents that belong to the American people, including some classified at the highest top-secret level, and then spend over a year obstructing efforts by the Archives and Justice Department to retrieve those papers.

Biden’s lax handling of classified documents is still under investigation by a special counsel. Former vice president Mike Pence’s discovery that he, too, had taken a “small number” of classified documents to his residence will not lead to criminal charges, the Justice Department told Pence’s lawyers last week.

“I’m at least as innocent as he is,” Trump said on social media about Pence. That, too, is untrue, because Pence surrendered the classified documents he had taken as soon as they were found. Trump repeatedly gave the government false assurances that he had returned all classified materials — until the Justice Department, in frustration, finally had the FBI execute a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago last August to seize the boxes of classified and unclassified documents that Trump had withheld.

Publicly, Trump has asserted that the papers belong to him, not the government — which is absurd. And he has claimed that as president he had the power to unilaterally declassify secret documents, without any formal process, simply by deciding that they were no longer classified. Trump’s attorneys have not relied upon that novel innocent-by-telepathy theory in pleading their client’s case.

According to a 2021 recording obtained by special counsel Jack Smith and first reported by CNN, Trump bragged to guests at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club about having a secret document relating to Iran. According to news reports, Trump expressed a desire to share the information with others but acknowledged he shouldn’t do so because the document was classified.

For once, the truth.

If media reports about that recording are accurate, Smith has powerful evidence that Trump knew the documents at Mar-a-Lago were still classified. Smith may now have no choice but to seek a felony indictment.

Do not be joyful at the prospect. It is sad that a former president might soon face federal charges of mishandling classified information — or worse. It is sad that a former president already faces state charges of falsifying business records to hide a hush money payment to an adult-film star. It is tragic that a former president might soon face more state and federal charges for trying to overturn the result of a presidential election.

May justice be done, without fear or favor. And may the nation never again entrust such power and responsibility to such a small, craven, supremely unworthy man.