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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 5, 2023

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I don’t care if he’s guilty as charged. Everyone who’s done anything guilty of something.

I do think he broke some norms with regards to these documents. But are they breaking bigger norms by charging him? I’m reminded that Hillary probably broke some laws with document security and Biden held on to some classified documents.

Even if you assume he’s 100% guilty we all break laws all the time and prosecutorial discretion etc don’t get charged. How do I know this isn’t something ignored for ex-potus and not something that matters because “Trump is a really bad man”. Lawfare etc especially when Trump loves breaking norms himself and probably should have just returned the docs.

I’m still reminded of other prosecutorial norms not being followed like Flynn being attacked on a Logan Act violation which every new administration breaks and had never been prosecuted before. And his NYC cases all seem to be “novel legal theories” or things no one prosecutes but Trump.

So this is weird because Trump breaks norms so I don’t know if they are breaking norms prosecuting him on a lawfare way.

If they had wanted to be maximally aggressive, they would have done so 2 years ago, not given him so many chances to make the problem go away.

That completely ignores the political benefits of the timing. I just can't take seriously any strictly legal analysis that ignores the political impacts.

Because you can smear him in the press. Which is exactly what happened. He’s was supposed to have all sorts of “top secret” documents. Even at one point mentioning nuclear secrets. I doubt the documents were anything all that important as if they even thought he had military secrets they would not have waited a year to search.