Frank Galvin said:
whiterock said:
FLBear5630 said:
whiterock said:
Clinton Sock Drawer case said that the determination of personal vs official is an exclusive, unreviewable power of POTUS.
Docs case likely doneā¦..
That is not what the Sock Drawer Case said!
Clinton was about tapes he did with a Historian that Judicial Watch wanted. The case was whether a PRIVATE entity can have the archivist challenge that position. Trumps was about US National Security documents he possessed, and NARA should have had. These are not the same thing. If Trump wants his pants that were in the box marked as personal than the socks drawer case may apply!
Classified documents can't be personal.
Nope. POTUS is the grand poohbah of classified information, the controlling legal authority on such questions, not reviewable. Same for questions about personal vs official documents.
Directly from the case: "...the President enjoys unconstrained authority to make decisions regarding the disposal of documents: '[a]lthough the President must notify the Archivist before disposing of records . . . neither the Archivist nor Congress has the authority to veto the President's disposal decision...."
Plaintiff asserted tapes contained classified information. Judge ruled it was irrelevant, because the determination about what was personal vs official was a unreviewable power of POTUS. And, more to the point, the question was argued in CIVIL court, which is how the Trump documents case should have been handled.
Again, the outrage was to bypass the obvious civil questions at hand and proceed directly to criminal prosecution. The civil issues would then become affirmative defense questions in a criminal trial, rather than jsut a civil trial itself (which Dems thought would benefit them politically). You have to let loose of the faulty premise that the classification questions radically changes the situation. It doesn't.
As it turned out, it hurt the Dems a lot more than helped them. The American people do not like authoritarian bullies, as Democrats have become.
So the solution is to give the most powerful man in the world care blanche to do what he wishes?
You are 100% wrong about this dispute hurting Democrats. People will hate this decision. If the Democrats had an energetic candidate he or she would shove this opinion up Trump's arse.
Unserious response.
The American people are already saying, by super-majority numbers, that they see the prosecutions of Trump as blatantly political. Dems could have avoided that by doing what every other admin, of both parties, has done when there is a dispute over the limits of Presidential power - file a civil lawsuit in federal court to obtain a court order for compliance. By choosing to prosecute Trump as a criminal under the Espionage Act, they have thrown out centuries of tradition.
Facts are facts, no matter how hard one works not to see them (as FL earnestly refuses to do on this particular case). The President
IS the originating authority on classified information. All classification powers are vested in that office. Every single classified document is created, controlled, used, declassified under Executive Orders written by him. There is no higher power to which he must answer on those questions. If he decides in a meeting with (another head of state, diplomat, businessman, even you) that it is in the national interest to reveal classified information, he has absolute power to do so. The only "check" on that power is impeachment or the ballot box. IF he were to reveal such information that resulted in the destruction of our Pacific Fleet, then either Congress or the people would vote him out. Every other officer, of any rank, in the USG or military must abide by controls on classified information. When POTUS deviates from those rules, it is deemed a change in the rules for that specific time and place. A LOT of years of precedent on that. You cannot write up a POTUS for a "security violation" (the inside baseball phrase to describe non-compliant handling of classified information.)
It really is that simple. No one else in the USA can stick a classified document in their pocket and take it home to read without violating law. But the POTUS can. It is his prerogative to dispose of classified documents as he sees fit. Fact. I once held power to originate classified documents, and did so the thousands (20 or so a day for 10 years), so I know a bit about the subject.
In that context a prosecution is outlandish. They chose to prosecute a man who had the power to do what he did rather than seek a civil court order to return the documents. Why is that? Most obvious answer is, they perceived political benefits to doing so. Less obvious but pertinent? Perhaps they knew the civil route would likely fail as well. A POTUS, you see, has unreviewable powers over determinations on what is private and what is official, to include classified information, and there is a recent federal district court ruling upholding that principle.