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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31190 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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What do you do when caught with top secret documents? Deflect:

[He] didn’t know the documents were there, and didn’t become aware they were there, until his personal lawyers informed the White House counsel’s office, one source familiar with the matter told CNN.

Of course, this time it’s Joe Biden, not Donald Trump. The President’s staff has handed over several documents, including TS//SCI, leftover from his time as VP. His personal attorneys found the documents on November 2nd while clearing out a closet in his former Penn Biden center office, immediately notified NARA, and handed off the hot potato the next day. Since then the DoJ has appointed an attorney to figure out who’s responsible for the illegally handled files. Other than that, most everyone involved has refused to comment unless they represent one of the parties in court.

Now for the obvious comparisons:

  • The type of documents seem similar to those kept in Mar-A-Lago, and were haphazardly filed in a similar manner

  • NARA didn’t know about (or request) the missing files

  • If Biden’s team is concealing more documents, they’re doing a much better job

  • The FBI is watching but not serving any warrants

  • Perhaps most importantly, the President is deflecting and denying rather than crying “witch hunt”

This leads, naturally, to two movies on one screen. Either the President is taking all the right actions after some staffer’s fuckup, or the security state is shamelessly giving him a slap on the wrist. What few outlets are writing on the subject fall into these two narratives. Democrats can’t help but compare the “scope and scale” of the violations, while Republicans emphasize the lack of door-kicking.

Neither stance addresses the real deciding factor of a smoking gun. This is going to be a Hillary situation. Like her infamous server, responsibility is diluted enough that no charges will be brought. (Note that I’ve made the same prediction about Mar-A-Lago.) Both narratives will try to spin epistemic uncertainty into iron-clad assurance, thus adding no value.

The only real conclusion is that you or I wouldn’t get off nearly so easily. If you’re going to store classified documents for your job, you’d better talk softly and hire a big staff.

An interesting angle of this that I have not yet heard discussed is the possible intent behind the publicity this is getting.

I don't think many would dispute that intense coverage of Trump's documents handling was fueled by:

  1. On the left, a desire to see Trump weakened/prosecuted

  2. On the right, amplification of the Trump persecution narrative

Now, arguably, the left-leaning establishment drives both engines that are key to #1: Institutional DC (or "the deep state") bureaucrats at the National Archives and FBI whose pressing of this issue drove the narrative; and, #2, the national media that made hay out of the confrontation. The right, as it does, reacted to this tag-team with the usual indignance.

So what are we to make of the left-leaning establishment+media now doing the same to Biden (although more gently, and well after it might have impacted the mid-term elections)?

There has been speculation among low-key conspiracy theorists over whether Biden would "be allowed" by the backroom DNC power players to run for re-election, or even to see out his full term, as due to his age and other failings he is considered a weak candidate. Could this minor scandal with a key element of hypocrisy be intentional "friendly fire," pushed by the DNC and/or potential Democrat rivals to make him a less viable candidate or even force a premature resignation? It's not a big enough scandal to ruin Biden's reputation but reminds me a little of the Al Franken situation, where Democrats used him as a pawn to show "We hold our own to the same standards!" and conveniently make room for a more demographically attractive replacement with no inconvenient loss of political power.

Why else would we even hear about this?

This story is getting funnier with a second batch of documents being founded and Biden speaking on the matter:

Mr. Biden deflected questions about the documents when confronted by a reporter on Thursday at the White House, after delivering remarks on inflation. While the White House statement did not indicate whether the president had been aware the documents were there, a reporter asked why he would store classified papers near his Corvette.

Mr. Biden replied: “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, so it’s not like it’s sitting out on the street.”

This is quite the shift from where he stood on the Trump documents!

Mishandled IT / intelligence has been at the center of American political scandals in the last couple decades

Is it just 'boomers who can't use a computer' all the way down?

I forgot all about the Awan Brothers! I am guessing nothing ever happened with that, even though it had the stank of suspicious incompetence all over it.

Not just boomers, a lot of people (maybe the majority) are shockingly bad at even bare minimum computer security.

As much as I love to see jackass politicians hoist by their own petard, all any of this helps me to conclude is that the laws and regulations surrounding information handling in the United States are some combination of (1) retarded, (2) routinely ignored, and/or (3) disconnected from reality.

Somewhere, maybe in the old subreddit, I read a wonderful post by someone describing various levels of precaution that were supposed to be taken in labs doing "gain of function" research or similar, and then contrasting those levels of precaution with the actual levels of precaution likely to be taken by people who become accustomed to the environment by working in it day in, day out: much less precaution than required.

I have many reasons to believe that something similar is true of classified documents. Maybe some bureaucrats at the NSA or something actually take all the Mission: Impossible precautions of changing passwords regularly, air-gapping crucial secrets, etc. but I am confident that few (if any) elected officials even know what the damn regulations are--never mind actually taking pains to follow them. This goes double for the executive, particularly since it is arguably the case that the President (and even perhaps some others) can essentially just decide to declassify stuff (I'm oversimplifying, here, but the office of the President really does arguably have practically plenary power over many things under the Constitution, and national security is one of them).

This is really why Hillary's servers were such an annoying sideshow. Yes, I think she was probably guilty of a federal crime, but it's the same federal crime you could very probably pin on half the elected officials in DC, if you were sufficiently motivated to do so. Trump appears to probably be guilty of the same crime, more or less, and now we have evidence that Biden, too, appears to have basically done the same thing. Now, show me some evidence that any of these people were selling state secrets or something, and we could have a more lively conversation. And maybe I should be more angry about this kind of malfeasance than I am. But if you write enough laws, eventually everyone is always guilty of something, and laws that require you to be careful just in case, even though bad things almost never actually happen as a result of noncompliance, are almost always the first ones people grow comfortable ignoring. I doubt there is anything nefarious going on with Biden's lax document handling--but I feel the same about Trump, and Clinton.

What I don't like is giving the bureaucracy (like the Justice Department) a free hand to interfere with elected politicians, or not, as they please, based on rules the bureaucracy is paid to learn and know and enforce, but which elected officials can only, apparently, correctly interpret with the help of whatever Court they ultimately have to face on the matter. I don't like Biden (or Trump, or Clinton, it turns out I kind of hate all politicians) and part of me wants to just not care that his feet might get put to the fire on this, at least a little. But mostly I am suspicious of the frequency with which (what are probably in all cases entirely predictably) "mishandled documents" is becoming everyone's favorite "gotcha!"

The Hilary email server thing is really a special case that usually isn't well explained...

She wanted a separate email system so:

  1. She and Huma could co-mingle Secretary of State business and Clinton Foundation business. Foreign governments were making requests about official business to the clintonemail.com address, and getting donation requests for the Clinton Foundation from the same email address. There was a pretty strong subtext there.

  2. Keeping the emails off of government servers kept them out of FOIA requests.

Now what makes it a big scandal is that the bureaucrats in DC were helping her. She was powerful and popular in DC. No one else could have pulled it off.

The email server was discovered when Judicial Watch noticed that they weren't seeing any emails from Hilary's account in their FOIA requests about Benghazi.

The staff in charge of FOIA requests knew all about the separate email server and argued that those records weren't in their possession so they couldn't search them. But responding to the request with "no relevant records found" is dishonest given that they knew they should have had the records.

It came out that it wasn't secured properly and foreign intelligence services were likely reading classified emails there. That defeated the "what's the harm" excuse.

It's not the worst scandal that's ever happened, but it does stand out as unique. Hilary had been so powerful in DC for so long that she knew how to flout the rules. There really isn't anyone else who could have done something similar.

I agree that in general high level officials get sloppy with classified information and do things that an ultra aggressive DOJ could prosecute them for. It seems inevitable given the amount of sensitive information they deal with and the fact it's impossible to live in a SCIF.

++

The Hillary scandal is an order of magnitude worse than Trump/Biden because of the intent behind what she was doing. The purpose was to evade oversight both from the public and congress. And she systematically compromised national security for that purpose (and most likely corruption/graft).

The Hillary scandal is an order of magnitude worse than Trump/Biden because of the intent behind what she was doing. The purpose was to evade oversight both from the public and congress. And she systematically compromised national security for that purpose (and most likely corruption/graft).

Yes. She can't plead ignorance, because she took willful action to subvert the default way of doing things, when the easy ignorant path is to just accept the standard government email accounts which are already set-up for compliance with discovery regulations. Sort of like how putting classified documents in an envelope marked "Personal" (or stuffed in your socks, like Sandy Berger) shows intent to subvert.

Either the President is taking all the right actions after some staffer’s fuckup, or the security state is shamelessly giving him a slap on the wrist.

It is far too early to conclude that.

The Archives realized that Trump had held classified materials post-presidency in January 2022. The matter has not concluded as of January 2023. So 12 months after the government became aware of the issue, Trump has received no punishment or slap on the wrist.

And you want to pose Biden as having already been given a pass?

Absurd.

And you want to pose Biden as having already been given a pass? Absurd.

@netstack doesn't actually believe that, and isn't claiming to. He's describing an argument he expects to see from Reds, which notably Reds don't actually appear to be making, or at least not here. And you're responding as though this is an actual argument someone is advancing as their own earnestly-held opinion.

This dynamic is... offputting.

Yeah, I was basing that “movie” off of a coworker.

Like most everyone in my industry, he was mad about the double standard between politicians and employees’ conduct, but he immediately switched to talking about institutional bias. Specifically, he claimed Merrick Garland was suppressing the story for the Democrats’ midterm benefit. Or perhaps for the general class of Washington elites; the bit that mattered was Trump’s outsider status.

I’d argue that Trump is making the same implication when he truths about how the FBI hasn’t raided Biden’s houses. But interpreting his statements is fraught, as always, and I’m having a hard time seeing the posts without making an account, so I’ll stick to reporting claims made by my coworkers.

This leads, naturally, to two movies on one screen.

One thing that really helps keep it this way is the illegibility of whether there's anything substantively relevant in the documents. My prior is that most classified documents are wildly overclassified and that nothing much would happen if they were handled carelessly and illegally. When I hear that Biden and Trump have handled them carelessly and illegally, my first instinct is to ask, "OK, but does anyone actually care and was there anything actually important there?". That the answer tends to be, "can't tell you, it's top secret" allows people to form more or less whatever ideas they'd like about how important the documents actually are.

If nothing else, the news is pretty amusing. It certainly makes it a fair bit harder for Biden to go around pulling the "I would never" routine and be taken seriously.

One thing I’d like to know is if trump had any documents which were compartmentalized, Joe Biden actually did and top secret conpartmentalized is a much more meaningful designation

Politicians and political appointees are notoriously sloppy with this stuff.

People who work with this stuff with a living don't have this problem, but that's largely because the way they work with classified information is different. You go to work, you keep the documents at work within the SCIF, and you don't take the documents out of the SCIF, and you go home at the end of the day with all the documents still there (hopefully in the proper safe; if you leave them strewn out on your desk in the SCIF you might get a meeting with an irritated security officer, and if you do it too often you might get your clearance revoked, but you won't get arrested for that)

Also, the amount of automation nowadays is pretty big from my outsidish perspective (we are partially a contractor). We've accidentally been sent classified stuff (some of our employees do have high level clearances, I have a low level one), and it was encrypted when we got it, so it simply never was compromised.

Politicians and political appointees are notoriously sloppy with this stuff.

Some even stuff them in their underwear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Berger

That's a little different in that he was clearly doing stuff he knew he wasn't supposed to be doing, rather than just being sloppy in the course of his work.

Indeed.

One of my coworkers was complaining this is nothing new—he remembered seeing a cover sheet on live TV as the President walked to a plane. Not a spill, just a disregard for the usual rules. If he or I was taking anything out of a SCIF, I think we’d have to double bag it, maybe with a dedicated padlock?

The whole dynamic is different.

Isn’t this exactly like some psychological bias I’m too lazy to look up.

Someone else/out group - they do something wrong - it’s because they are very bad people who need to punished with huge character flaws.

I do something/in group - I do same wrong thing - it was an honest mistake that anyone could have done by accident. Has no reflection on my character

Sure. Two groups, two screens. But it’s not just down to fundamental attribution error.

In a vacuum, the scope and scale for this particular incident favor one side. So the other has to rely on existing assumptions of systemic bias. That makes the preconceptions—do the feds hate me? would they cheat for Biden?—just as important as the perceived character flaws.

Fundamental Attribution Error, and when describing under the influence of this error, Russels/Emotive Conjugation.

While I don't expect the public to follow the plot, both incidents do have quantitative and qualitative differences, though I suspect this will become less true as time goes on. As far as I know, Team Biden found about 12 documents and handed them over within 24 hours, whereas Team Trump had around 300 and dragged his feet for months.

Anyone crying "where is the raid" is either trying to score political points in bad faith (which is fine if that's the game), or is not thinking too hard.

the President is deflecting and denying rather than crying “witch hunt”

He appears to be front-running it, if anything. Now that the story is (finally) out, he said

[The people who found the documents] did what they should have done. They immediately called the [National Archives] … turned them over to the Archives, and I was briefed about this discovery and surprised to learn that there were any government records that were taken there to that office," the president added. "But I don't know what's in the documents. My lawyers have not suggested I ask what documents they were

As far as I know, Team Biden found about 12 documents and handed them over within 24 hours, whereas Team Trump had around 300 and dragged his feet for months.

Except, if we are to believe the Biden team story, it is arguably worse. He didn't even know he had them, thus they were far less secure. Just MIA for a whole decade. The fact that team Trump was adversarial to the classification people doesn't make his conduct bad.

thus they were far less secure

This doesn't follow from the given. Allegedly they were lost in some locked closed that nobody went in and out of for years. Something like that. The FBI had security footage from Mar al Lago of people going in and out of where the documents were stored.

The fact that team Trump was adversarial to the classification people doesn't make his conduct bad.

It course it makes his conduct worse. I mean, whats worse: unknowingly keeping a work laptop, then giving immediately when found; or, unknowingly keeping a work laptop, and refusing to give it back, and forcing the police to come get it?

Allegedly they were lost in some locked closed that nobody went in and out of for years.

Yeah. Of course, that's why a random mover found them. Plus, the location where the documents were located get substantial funding from the Chinese government. More strikes against.

It course it makes his conduct worse. I mean, whats worse: unknowingly keeping a work laptop, then giving immediately when found; or, unknowingly keeping a work laptop, and refusing to give it back, and forcing the police to come get it?

This does not follow. There was a legal dispute about the propriety of him having the documents, including whether they are still classified and whether some, all, or none are actually his personal property. This is not like a work laptop. It is a laptop that you used at work, but claim to have purchased yourself, and contains intermingled work product and stuff for your dad's birthday party. And even the status of the work product is in question because you may be allowed to keep significant (or all) portions of it because you are allowed to keep form memos, explainers, etc between jobs.

but claim to have purchased yourself

This breaks the analogy because there is no legal theory where Trump can claim he owned the property, especially after he was no longer president. He didn't create the documents. His office may have, but it was probably created by the IC. Regardless, it's spelled out that he can't keep any of it after he leaves office. Sure, it might be mingled with personal effects which need to be separated, but he is legally required to give back State property. Of course he is allowed to dispute that he is allowed to keep it, but he can't refuse to show why.

This breaks the analogy because there is no legal theory where Trump can claim he owned the property, especially after he was no longer president. He didn't create the documents. His office may have, but it was probably created by the IC. Regardless, it's spelled out that he can't keep any of it after he leaves office.

This is all basically false, aside from the claim that many of the documents were created by his office or the IC. Before the 1970s, he would be presumed to own it all. Only because of Nixon and a bunch of new rules created wildly and haphazardly in backlash to him (many of dubious constitutionality) is there any theory that all the President's papers are not personal effects. That he can't have them after leaving office also relies on two dubious theories: First, that he cannot declassify document haphazardly as president (even though all classification authority rests with him), and second that Biden's unprecedented stripping of his security clearance is allowed.

In other words, for what Trump did to even be bad (not to mention illegal) every consecutive allegation and legal theory against him has to be correct. If even one is wrong, the whole case crumbles like a Jenga tower. OTOH, team Biden's constructed narrative is an admission to a felony.

Then we disagree about what is true. AFAIK ex-presidents cannot keep classified information. Perhaps this wasn't the case 53 years ago.

Almost every ex-president had classified information in their libraries until those documents were declassified on December 31, 2006 stemming from Clinton's 1995 EO. The Clinton, W, and Obama libraries likely contain classified info that hasn't reached the 25 year limit. Also, most ex-presidents are looped in on some level of classified briefings, and have special access points placed in their residences, which are considered secure. The only reason this Trump-FBI saga isn't following normal, quiet, ex-President procedures is because Biden stripped his clearances, and the FBI decided to escalate for publicity reasons.

Anyone crying "where is the raid" is either trying to score political points in bad faith (which is fine if that's the game), or is not thinking too hard.

I don't care about a raid, but I would like to know what the people who were trying to push Trump's classified caper as a 100% malicious act of treason (because why did he have documents if he wasn't planning to use them?) think of Biden's clandestine kerfuffle. Because the only reason I cared about any of this was because it seemed like some people really wanted to use it to get Trump arrested.

I didnt think it was treason, but as someone who wants Trump to be indicted over the classified material handling, I'd love to see Biden get similarly indicted once he is out of office.

Let me see if I understand correctly.

In Biden's case the staffers who discovered the documents immediately alerted NARA to their existence, turned the documents over, and are cooperating with the governments investigation into how the documents came to be there.

In Trump's case NARA learned Trump had documents bearing classification markings after some were included in boxes of presidential records Trump returned to NARA. NARA told Trump they were going to inform the FBI of the classified docs. Trump asks NARA not to tell the FBI, but produces no further documents. Eventually NARA informs the FBI. The FBI gets a subpoena for all documents at Mar-a-Lago bearing a certain set of classification markings. Trump turns over some documents and (falsely) certifies that those documents are all the ones in his possession that are covered by the subpoena. The FBI, by means not fully public yet, develop probable cause to believe Trump has further documents covered by the subpoena which he has not produced. A magistrate judge issues a warrant and the FBI execute that warrant. In the course of executing the warrant the FBI discover their probable cause was correct and Trump had lied about compliance with the subpoena.

Now, maybe some very damning facts will come out in the Biden case. It is a developing situation after all. But on the basis of the facts I know so far the differential response by law enforcement and related entities seem totally explicable.

Now, maybe some very damning facts will come out in the Biden case. It is a developing situation after all. But on the basis of the facts I know so far the differential response by law enforcement and related entities seem totally explicable.

The 'damning' fact comes down to declassification authority. The legal architecture of the American classification system is such that bar maybe a few categories of information (nuclear, iirc), the President is the ultimate classification and declassification authority. The legal argument in favor of Trump was that, as it was his decision / auspice to move the documents while President, it wouldn't be a criminal action for the President to do things in the purview of the President.

The NARA / FBI saga relied on the Biden Administration's legal position of 'nuh uh' and for the FBI to conduct a highly publicized raid in the context of then-ongoing Jan 6 hearings by the Democratic Party, as opposed to less obtrusive means.

The issue here is that these Biden documents, coming as they did from a time when Biden was NOT the declassification authority, lack even the 'I was the President at the time' defense. And, with multiple locations now identified, this is indicative of a pattern... but not a pattern being treated with the same urgency, publicity, or even legal rationals for why the Public Should Care.

To which most people will shrug, and go 'why should I care if -context of choice-,' and proceed to not care. Which is the point- the caring is not based on the legality of the situation (post-fact cooperation does not mitigate pre-discovery recklessness), it was based on people wanting a reason to go after someone they wanted to go after, while finding reasons not to go after people they don't want to go after.

Which is what was expected, and assessed/predicted during the Mar-a-Lago incident, when people were claiming it was a Very Serious Thing, as opposed to the cynical take that it was a Very Opportunist Thing.

How is Trump's declassification authority relevant for his lying about compliance with a subpoena?

The would be the 'insert context of choice' demonstrating that it's not about the underlying issue, but rather the search of a stick. Note how the stick is now 'compliance with a subpoena' and not the relevance of the classified documents that drove the subpoena.

Trump's declassification authority is relevant to the discussion because the injustice of violating process relies relies on the perception of the legitimacy of the process being applied. 'Resisting arrest' takes completely different tones and perceptions if the nature of the arrest is perceived as legitimate or arbitrary. Likewise, the relevance of complying with subpoenas relies on the legitimacy of the subpoenas. If the argument of Trump's classification authority (that he could not commit illegal storage of the classified materials because the President is who decides what is and is not classified, and Presidents have an acknowledged history of deciding what documents to take with them) is taken as legitimate, then the NARA demands for documentation, and FBI decision to raid to enforce, are illegitimate as a consequence because the NARA doesn't have a right to documents.

Trump's declassification authority is also relevant in that it is, by and large, unique to the President, and does not apply to the Secretary of State (Clinton), or Vice President (Biden). Turning the argument into 'compliance with the subpoena' just underscores the nature of the subject as a process crime, and not, say, the claimed-at-the-time justification of the importance of national security information whose improper storage could cause severe damage to the national security of the United States and thus justify subpoenas and a publicized FBI raid to recover.

If the argument of Trump's classification authority (that he could not commit illegal storage of the classified materials because the President is who decides what is and is not classified, and Presidents have an acknowledged history of deciding what documents to take with them) is taken as legitimate, then the NARA demands for documentation, and FBI decision to raid to enforce, are illegitimate as a consequence because the NARA doesn't have a right to documents.

This is not correct. Subpoenas are issued all the time by the government for documents which the individual being subpoenaed has a lawful right to possess. I suspect most of the time when the federal government is subpoenaing something from someone, the individual in question has a lawful right to possess it.

In any case, if Trump thought the subpoena was issued unlawfully, or was unlawfully overbroad, the correct thing to do is to go to a federal court and ask them to either quash or narrow the subpoena, not to lie about complying with it. This is something Trump has done with other subpoenas (such as ones issued by the House when he was President) so why isn't that what he did here? If he thought the subpoena was unlawfully issued because he had declassified the documents in question, why did he turn over any docs, rather than go to a federal court and seek to have the subpoena quashed on those grounds? It seems to me a much more parsimonious explanation is that Trump knew the documents were not his property (as confirmed by the 11th Circuit) and that he was required to turn them over and he thought he could deceive the federal government into believing he had done so, without actually doing so.

And this is, again, demonstrating that the issue is not, in fact, the possession of classified documents, despite it being the claimed and presented reason for why it was a Significant and Serious Offense at the time.

'Trump played lawfare badly' is certainly a useful stick given his skills, but it remain a different stick.

I rather think both sticks are applicable.

Trump plainly lied about compliance with a lawfully issued subpoena and also mishandled classified documents. The declassification argument is an entirely post-hoc defense that was only raised after Trump's defiance of a subpoena became public knowledge. Trump has repeatedly had the opportunity to raise the declassification defense in court, including in the special master proceedings that he requested, and has consistently declined to assert that any particular document was actually declassified. The most Trump, via his lawyers, has been willing to assert is that he could have declassified them while President (which no one disputes) and this fact obliges the Department of Justice to treat the documents as if he had actually declassified them (false).

More or less.

On the merits, the Biden closet is strictly less dramatic than Mar-A-Lago. Partisan defenses have to rely on the perception of unfair treatment. The baseline, as advertised by Trump on his platform, is “why no raid?” This isn’t very reasonable, but it does align with his narrative.

A slightly more defensible complaint is “right before midterms!” I think this, too, is selective, since IIRC nothing about the Trump situation was public knowledge until the raid. Expecting the DoJ to intentionally broadcast this event is implausible, and relies on the preconception that the FBI raid was a political maneuver first and foremost.

The media coverage, or lack thereof, reflects that this is a less exciting issue...but is also fodder for the usual array of bias complaints. I expect posters in a couple month to be treating this like the Hunter laptop, asserting that the story was “buried.” It is possible that, like with the NY Post, someone did suppress an attempt to break this story, but I think the facts of the case are sufficient to explain low response.

Biden closet is strictly less dramatic than Mar-A-Lago.

Less dramatic does not mean less bad for national security, nor more legitimate. The fact that Biden's team is allied with the FBI and IC and Trump was oppositional to them is the source of the drama/lack of drama.

I expect posters in a couple month to be treating this like the Hunter laptop, asserting that the story was “buried.” It is possible that, like with the NY Post, someone did suppress an attempt to break this story, but I think the facts of the case are sufficient to explain low response.

If in a couple months posters are not talking about this story, but are still talking about Hunter's laptop, will that be the best possible outcome in your view?

You're claiming that partisans latch onto any incident and spin it for maximum political effect, regardless of the realities. This is largely true, I think. On the other hand, some incidents actually do matter, and are a big deal, and partisans can run it the other way and use nothingburgers as justification for ignoring matters of import, can't they?

There may be some slight technical differences in that POTUS has a bit more authority when it comes to things like classification than the VP does as well. Probably not relevant in the long run but it's sure to waste a few mental cycles for people who get hung up on details.

One report I saw on this pointed out that it all went down before midterms, but was successfully hushed up such that we are only finding out about it now. No FBI raid, no suspiciously tipped off reporter who just happens to be in the right place at the right time with a camera. No leaks to the media. Not even a hint.

I mean, that's probably the way it should work. A shame it only works that way for Party members in good standing.

I’m still of the opinion that we only heard about the Trump scenario due to the raid. If his team had cooperated—and I still don’t understand why they didn’t—the story wouldn’t have had any spice. It’s not like we heard anything about the first 15 boxes or the negotiations, not until the FBI showed their hand.

On the other hand, if when Trump shows an inch of vulnerability, there are countless journos waiting to jump. And I realize those aren’t nearly as interested in a tip on the current admin. So it’s hard to pretend that good standing isn’t more important than actual actions.

If his team had cooperated—and I still don’t understand why they didn’t

It supports my prior that Trump is a reflection of the same mix of corruption/ignorance/incompetence as other politicians of his standing, but is far far worse at (or has no interest in) playing the game. He has no veneer of respectability that acts as a buffer for others. He exposes himself, even if the others are just the same underneath.

If his team had cooperated—and I still don’t understand why they didn’t

What do you need explained? Trump wanted to keep the documents, most ex-presidents in his position would have been allowed to keep them indefinitely.

IMO a little conspiracy theory. Team Red/Team Blue play a repeated game. Team Red specifically triggered Team Blue to overreact. Then Team Red gets to complain about Team Blue’s control of the security state and persecution of Team Red and not playing fair. Team Blue gets to complain that Team Red are really bad people yada, yada, yada, nuclear bombs, Team Red will kill us all.

If Team Blue doesn’t raid Team Red a bunch of meaningless dated documents sit in a box in some mansion. Instead everyone on Team Red and Team Blue gets paid. And their partisans are entertained .

Trump’s team didn’t cooperate because Trump, obviously.

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