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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?
Their claim was that while they were handling the documents they added the papers since there were several boxes haphazardly organized and they wanted a cover letter to keep track of which documents went together, and if you were doing that you'd need to mark them confidential. Then they forgot to remove them when taking pictures. That first sentence seems sensible to me as something you would need to do. The second yes I get is extremely suspicious.
Because quite frankly we have the timeline of events and it involves a year and a half of trying to get Trump to turn over everything. Unless the media and government are making up literally everything, if even half of what was claimed is true it would be plenty to damn anyone else. You can speculate all you want that they would have tried to prosecute Trump if he had cooperated, and hypotheticals are unfalsifiable so I could never disprove that. But the thing is, I don't have to. There are so many things stacked against Trump regarding this issue that even if it were 100% true that Smith staged a falsified photo op intentionally my conclusion would be that Smith is corrupt and did something completely pointless because Trump blatantly tried to hide classified docs. The only facts required to establish the latter is true are that he was asked to return the docs and that a year and a half later they were still finding boxes of documents that would be pretty damn hard to genuinely miss. And Trump's defense wasn't contesting that.
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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.
From the Clinton investigation:
Of course, that was Clinton, and I understand the assignment is that many here will say it's because she's a Democrat. Mike Pence cooperated with the search and no charges were brought. Here's a good read about some of the details of prosecution related to John Bolton, though I suppose it depends on if you're willing to believe it.
Looking back, it might be less a gentleman's agreement and more that prosecutors have typically been relying on proving intent. And if you can prove that you've given them several warnings and chances that would clear that bar.
Not necessarily. I mean, if you believed that you had a legitimate right to possess the documents and the person warning you was incorrect, then you might not have the necessary intent.
Sure, but extrapolating from that line of reasoning these alleged events wouldn't make sense.
If we assume that Trump believed he had every right to own these documents, wouldn't he have responded to the May 6th 2021 request to turn over documents with, "Yes, I took the documents. No I don't need to return them because I declassified them and have every right to keep them." Trump is generally pretty fucking brazen when he thinks he's in the right.
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