whiterock said:
Osodecentx said:
whiterock said:
Osodecentx said:
whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
whiterock said:
sombear said:
Oldbear83 said:
sombear: "Have you read the indictment?"
Yes.
Don't you find it important to note how quickly the indictment was unsealed by the prosecutor, and don't you see how hard the prosecutor is pushing the effort to find Trump guilty in the media well ahead of the actual trial?
That is not the behavior of a confident prosecutor. And yes, the whole point is whether the charges are true.
There are myriad legal issues in play here, ranging from who has primacy in control of Presidential Records, including classified documents, the conflict between the provisions of the Presidential Records Act and the Espionage Act (no one should seriously expect Espionage charges against Trump to continue, those are going to get whacked early on, the prosecution is just hoping to negotiate and get something for removing them), and other elements of the chain of possession.
It's going to be difficult to prove Trump had knowledge of the location of all the documents concerned, or even that he directed his staff to interfere with the return of those documents.
A lot of people are building opinions on assumptions and nothing more than what they want to think of Trump. As others have observed, it's very possible for Trump to be an ass but not guilty of the charges.
All fair points, and, again, I have not defended any prior gov legal actions against Trump, nor have I claimed even in this case that the gov's motives have been pure. I've focused on the allegations themselves.
I do disagree with you on releasing the indictment. It was going to become public this week anyways. Smith knew there would be major backlash (obviously) and knew the best thing to do was provide detail in the indictment and release it early. I would have done the exact same thing, and I don't find that suspicious at all.
Trump could have shut all of this down if he had just been willing to use the boxes to also store his socks.
He just needed to give back what they asked for. This is a self-created mess. Sometimes in life, you have to follow rules. And sometimes it is advantageous to go along EVEN if you believe that you don't need to. Trump created this mess, this is all a Trump created mess.
An Obama-appointed judge allowed Clinton to skate on having hundreds of hours of tapes of official WH business stored in his sock drawer, citing the presidential records act.
Trump has an affirmative statutory defense against the charges.
Link?
Big story back in the day. Google it.
I want to be fair. Every defense offered up then was refuted.
DJT said he could declassify after he left - no
The papers were his - no
They weren't classified - yes
Anything else?
Presidential Records Act covers some of those questions, and also offer affirmative defense, classified or not.
The classification question is rarely fully discussed in the the press, but those expressing outrage that a classified document would be found in an insecure location, and that such is wildly different that what either of the Clintons did, are on very squishy ground.
In a ten year career I wrote a couple of intel reports a day, occasionally as many as 5-6. (plus operational reporting for the file). Those reports were RARELY (and by rarely I mean "cannot recall a single time, but I'm sure there were a few") about information sourced to a classified document. The reports were stuff like this:
-an account of a cabinet meeting, from a participant.
-an account of the opinions/reactions of a participant in the cabinet meeting.
-an account of the opinions/reactions of a senior policymaker on any given topic of the day
-an account of decisions made by key policymakers
-an account of key policymakers opinions about the decisions made by key policymakers
-an account of key policymakers opinions about each other
-etc. etc. etc.
There is an enormous gulf between classification and intelligence value. In fact, most of what is of intel value does not come from classified documents.
EVERYTHING on the sock drawer tapes was of intelligence value. (highest)
EVERYTHING on the bathroom server at Chappaqua was of intelligence value. (highest)
Every frickin' keystroke was Valhala-level goldmine intel for foreign powers friendly & not.
The musings of a POTUS at the end of the day about decisions, his opinions about his cabinet?
GOLD. Career making collection targets for intel officers.
The email rantings of a SECSTATE about her adulterous husband.
GOLD. Career making collection targets for intel officers.
That's why such things are considered government documents/equipment and covered by records acts.
That's why documents not classified by containing classified information are typically considered (even whenn not marked) classified.
So, sure. Talk about the legalities of whether the doc was classified or not, whether it was properly stored or not, whether there were good faith efforts to comply with requests or not.....that's all relevant. But don't be hypocritical about the fate of the western alliance because Trump had a 6 year old planning document about a scenario for a possible for a missile strike on Iran. Similar discussions about similar topics were on those tapes, too. And Hillary for her entire two years as Secstate did all business personal and official on a personally own, unsecure server in an unsecure location. FBI analysis ascertained that numerous foreign entities accessed the server. Every keystroke was intelligence gold for our adversaries, who knew all about her "fundraising" at the Clinton Foundation, her plans & intentions personal & official, etc....in REAL TIME. And those servers were, at the time of their destruction pursuant to Clinton's explicit order, under subpoena.
To overlook what she did and put Trump in jail is.....well, if you didn't realized it before, there's your sign about the dual standard of justice. A really, really big part of the electorate is furious, and justifiably so. Note that Comey did not talk about the number of classified emails on Hillary's server. He talked about "email chains" to obscure the number of classified documents at issue, knowing that every email which contained a classified document was itself a classified email. His phrasing reduced the apparent number of documents in question by orders of magnitude.
Lots & lots & lots of people who know the ins/outs of the classified world know the above, and just shake our head in disgust at the blatant bs going. on here.
When/if the jury gets this case, I'm sure one of the issues they'll decide won't be "should the document have been classified?"
There won't be a question like "since Hillary wasn't indicted should Trump have been indicted?"
Likewise there won't be a question like "since Hunter hasn't been indicted, should Trump be allowed to do whatever he wishes regardless of what the law of the USA state?"
The documents for which he was indicted do not belong to him. They are property of the USA. Plans for war generated by the Pentagon aren't Trumps personal papers. He was showing this off to people with no security clearance.
Presidential Daily Briefings are generated by the CIA and don't belong to Trump.
Below is a summary of the charges and their factual basis:
Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta are accused of conspiring to obstruct justice.Prosecutors say they have assembled evidence showing that Mr. Trump
willfully ignored a May 2022 subpoena requiring him to return everything belonging to the National Archives and took extraordinary steps to obstruct the F.B.I. and grand jury.In the hours before Mr. Trump's lawyer visited his Mar-a-Lago estate to search for documents in a storage room an attempt to comply with the subpoena
Mr. Trump directed Mr. Nauta, his co-defendant, to move 64 of the boxes out of the storage room because he maintained they were his property.Top secret documents were stored so sloppily they spilled onto the floor.
One of the most striking images in the document is a picture of a
box of top secret national security documents that in 2021 had spilled on the floor of a Mar-a-Lago storage room accessible to many of the resort's employees. The files were marked with restrictive "five eyes" classification markings,
indicating they could only be viewed by officials with top security clearances issued by the United States and its closest allies.Mr. Trump suggested his lawyer take a folder of documents and 'if there's anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out.'
In one of the most problematic pieces of evidence for Mr. Trump, the indictment recounts how, according to his lawyer's words,
Mr. Trump and the lawyer discussed what to do with a folder of 38 documents with classification markings. The lawyer said Mr. Trump made a "plucking motion" that implied, "why don't you take them with you to your hotel room and if there's anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out."Mr. Trump shared secrets with visitors to Bedminster. There's audio.
Many of the episodes recounted in the filing have been reported in the news media including a potentially damaging revelation that
he was recorded showing off secret U.S. battle plans describing the material as "highly confidential" and "secret," while admitting it had not been declassified."See, as
president I could have declassified it," Mr. Trump said. He added, "Now I can't, you know, but this is still a secret."A secret map was said to be shared with a political action committee staff member.
In another incident in August or September 2021,
he shared a top secret military map with a staff member at his political action committee who did not have a security clearance.According to the indictment, the former president suggested that a military operation in an unnamed country was not going well. He showed the map to the staff member but, according to the indictment, warned the person "not to get too close."
M. Evan Corcoran, one of Trump's lawyers, is a key witness.
Mr. Corcoran, who kept meticulous notes (some of them transcribed from iPhone voice memos he made for himself), found himself in the position of
pressuring his evasive client into doing both the lawful and self-protective thing by returning the documents to the government.In one of the more stunning revelations, prosecutors said that
Mr. Trump and Mr. Nauta moved around boxes so that Mr. Corcoran, who requested a full accounting of the material to provide to investigators, could not find them. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/09/us/politics/trump-indictment-highlights.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-trump-raid&variant=show®ion=MAIN_CONTENT_1&block=storyline_levelup_swipe_recirc
