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I'm of two minds on this - I agree with you that there needs to be a level of immunity, but we also have an incredibly badly behaved political class.
I guess I tend to be a lot more on the side of "If it's something you can explain in 10 words or less, and everyone would agree about how severe it is, prosecute them - if it's something that requires detailed technical expertise to understand, then you probably need to let it slide." Under this standard:
To be fair, in general I prefer that our criminal system work that way - I remember someone said something like "The only real crimes are those you could explain to the founding fathers", and I kind of agree with that system; I think we have too many things that are either crimes or technically-not-crimes due to weird arcane loopholes that make intuition kind of useless, and the whole system relies on prosecutorial discretion to avoid everyone being in jail forever (which is another way of saying "If the people in power don't like you, you're going to jail").
Agree in principle, but 'storing classified information incorrectly' is almost always prosecuted, is relatively simple to understand, and is quite a serious offense (although that part might not be well understood by lay people).
The reason it's always prosecuted is because the seriousness is impossible to determine. The whole point of properly controlling classified information is so that we know who has access to it and are aware when it's lost. But if you store it improperly, even if there's no evidence that a bad actor or foreign state accessed that information, you have to assume that they did access it, because the controls that would tell you it was accessed are not in place. In other words, every piece of information on Hillary's server must be assumed to be in the hands of our enemies. Her case is exceptionally egregious because her team wiped the server, so the nation doesn't even know what information was on there that was potentially leaked.
I think she should have been prosecuted. The violation is clear, significant, and deliberate, making this case far far more severe than the average. She was let off for political reasons, and because she's well connected, and I believe that is morally and also practically wrong, and is a large part of the reason why citizens don't trust the system to protect their interests. It's a clear failure of the system of law in the country when well-connected people are immune from the consequences of their misdeeds.
If I'm not mistaken, Trump was accused of something similar -- taking classified materials out of the White House. Do you agree he should have been prosecuted for this?
At the risk of being partisan, it does seem like there's a difference between the President (the highest authority) taking work home with him, and a department head setting up a secret unauthorised server apparently explicitly for the purpose of doing things without oversight. I would say that what Biden and Trump did was broadly on the same level, with Clinton being much more egregious than either.
I agree, but I think you see my point. Prosecuting Hillary Clinton for her apparent wrongdoing would invite retaliation in the form of prosecuting Republican officials for taking documents home. Arguments along the lines of "what he did wasn't anywhere near as bad" would be seen as partisan hackery.
(Of course Trump was prosecuted anyway, but hopefully the Democrats will re-think their lawfare tactics going forward).
As much as I hate to say it, this whole experience has led me to the conclusion that former high level government officials should enjoy gentleman's immunity, i.e. they shouldn't be prosecuted for wrongdoing in office unless there is strong bi-partisan consensus.
Using personal communication methods for government business is a widespread problem. Several members of Trump's cabinet did similar.
In Trump's case, he was asked on May 6th, 2021 to return classified documents. The raid happened on Aug 8, 2022. Trump wasn't being changed for his insecure practices. He was being charged for allegedly spending a year and a half actively stonewalling the government trying to recover all of the documents.
That sounds correct to me.
I don't know if this is true or not, but, assuming it's true, and assuming that there was a desire to pursue a lawfare attack against him, he could have been charged for what took place between January 20 and May 5. Agreed?
I did cite my source, and the government thought they had enough of a case that they brought it to court. Though that saga ended because they waited long enough that Judge Cannon arguably dragged the case until right before the election then tossed it under questionable circumstances.
He technically could have been charged for what took place before May 5th. On that I am agreed. However, I argue that there is in fact a gentleman's agreement for high ranking government officials to not prosecute over classified materials. And that gentleman's agreement is that if they tell you to return classified documents and you do, then nothing happens to you. My argument is that unlike Hillary or Biden, Trump tried to fuck with them when they tried to retrieve the documents. My argument is that the classified documents case wasn't lawfare because it wasn't primarily about hating Trump because he makes Democrats mad, it was Trump violating the gentleman's agreement and finding out what happens when you fuck around with three-letter agencies for a year and a half.
Didn't they show up with faked printouts saying "TOP SECRET" to stage a falsified photo-op? From the same agencies that were already falsifying evidence to judges in order to spy on his campaign?
Why on earth would you think any of those "high ranking" government officials would offer Trump a gentleman's agreement?
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I am aware, but in my experience the mainstream media is not trustworthy when it comes to Trump.
Can you cite some precedents for this gentleman's agreement? Because I am seriously skeptical.
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