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The FBI Didn’t Persecute Hillary. It Protected Her. (Eli Lake @Tablet).
The gist is in the title, a longer gist is:
I urge you to read the article itself, as it's about details and evidence for the claim above. It did also finally clue me in about why the secret services might be supporting the left. Before Trump was elected they were:
[EDIT: _I wrongly thought my original referred to the FBI. That confused reading did in fact solve the puzzle that I had been wondering about, but is nonethless confused. I should have quoted: _]
This is very plausible. I hail from a longstanding 3rd wold democracy, and this is pretty typical behaviour. None of the elections are fair because the authorities tip them in favour of whichever side looks more likely to win. Usually this is the government of the day, but not always. In Australia, Rupert Murdoch behaved this way too with his media coverage.
Once Trump was elected, you would expect the FBI to quietly switch sides. But they might have accidentally burned their bridges. Or you might blame Trump for being too volatile and sour-minded to be worth sucking up to.
The other angle is topical: is prosecuting Trump and not Clinton a double standard? There's an argument (ping @ymeskhout) that the difference is that Trump has so brazzenly admitted guilt. Well if there's videotape Clinton also bragging about how her sever was illegal but she's above the law, then we are less likely to know about it because she really is above the law.
If the Tablet article is accurate, this casts light on this and every other putative distinction between the Trump and Hillary cases. Whatever distinction there is, it has (at least if the article is accurate) been brought out under circumstances where investigating authorities have bent over backwards to find ways to protect Hillary.
So what? That might sound flippant but it's truly not. What is the implication or application to politics here? What are we supposed to do with this information/what is the logical call to action? I think that's almost as important as discussing the actual contents.
Example. A lot might read your post and linked article, and let's say for the sake of argument it's all true. Some might say, "well this means Trump shouldn't be charged for the crimes he's currently accused of." Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Because at the end of the day, intent does matter. While Hillary is certainly guilty of thinking she's above the law, used to be coddled by the media, and having her wishes fulfilled by government bureaucrats, and being dishonest on top, she didn't intend to expose confidential or classified information and most of the email saga came down to a mixture of negligence and pride. Contrast Trump in the most recent classified docs saga. It's NOT an issue of over-classification (though it does exist). It's NOT a case of negligence, as he was given a number of chances to cooperate. It was WILLFUL retention of government secrets. It's not like he couldn't access these secrets -- I'm almost certain former presidents are given access to these materials if they are writing their memoirs, for example. It was the pride of "owning" them, though they manifestly weren't his. It doesn't matter how the investigation started, only how it ends.
Vague gestures at other would-be conspiracies sound much like the Steele Dossier inspired ones. Hunter Biden has gone through at least one GOP led congressional investigation. So far, not a whole lot to show.
The President is the Constitutional, ultimate classifying authority. If Trump wanted to maintain those documents, as president, that suffices.
Anyways your post just reads like an elaborate rationalization. Hillary's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, Hunter Biden's crimes aren't so bad because reason-reason-reason, but Trump's crimes are bad because... How do you know that Hillary Clinton didn't "intend" to expose materials? How do you know that the documents manifestly aren't Trump's, when we don't know what the documents even are? You can fill in the blanks however you want, I guess, but it won't make a very rigorous argument.
Investigate Trump over Russia, investigate Trump's business records, investigate Trump's campaign, investigate Trump's sexual relations, investigate Trump's administration... wow, after eight years of manufacturing pretexts to spy on him, he finally committed a crime after we picked a fight. He waved classified documents in front of a reporter's face and everything. Guess we have to charge him now, everyone is equal before the law, justice and democracy and liberty and freedom prevail. What, charge other politicians? Hahahaha
if we accept for the sake of argument that what Trump did is no worse than hat Hillary did, how am I supposed to see Trump as anything more than a rank hypocrite? Trump excoriated Hillary for mishandling documents. He tore her to pieces. He wanted her locked up. Given how close 2016 was it's probably not an exaggeration to say that Hillary's emails won Trump the election. and then at the end of his term he stashes a garage full of classified documents in his house? and then lies to investigators about it? Why on earth should I care that he's getting a taste of his own medicine? Crooked Trump.
If it is true that Trump can psychically declassify documents then I'm sure that Trumps very competent, very well paid lawyers will put together an extremely convincing argument to that effect and get the case dismissed. I'm not holding my breath.
Well, for one, that is rhetoric. He actually let her off the hook.
For two a bathroom or garage with Secret Service protection is orders of magnitude more secure than an email server set up in 2008 with 1980 level protections.
Third they both lied. But at least he didn't attempt to destroy the evidence and only get found out because the spouse of his top aid was caught up in a child porn investigation.
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Come on, really? The whole argument is about political persecution against Donald Trump, and unprecedented levels of scrutiny against him. It doesn't matter how well-paid or competent Trump's lawyers are (and surely they're both, wisecracking aside) -- the federal government is bigger and has more resources than Donald Trump. Yeah, sure, if Trump were in the right, the case would be dismissed, because the law is never unfair, that's a crazy accusation, I can't imagine anyone in this conversation alleging that. Be real. This argument is beneath me, even if it's not beneath you.
McDonalds had more resources than Stella Liebeck
I wasn't being sarcastic. I'm sure they are very competent. Which is why I don't really believe your legal theory. If what you are saying is correct, and it is uncomplicatedly true that Trump axiomatically cannot mishandle documents, then why aren't his lawyers screaming it from the rooftops? Why haven't they made that argument in court? why aren’t there droves of grumbling articles from the New York Times about how 'this is all BS but unfortunately his lawyers do kinda have a point'? Why did his previous lawyers appear to quit over this? Why did Trump try and hide evidence from investigators if what he did wasn't even illegal? It's all very weird.
unless, of course, you're wrong.
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I think what Hillary did is worse than what Trump did. Presidents have ultimate classifying authority, and storing government secrets in a box in your bathroom is much better than storing them on a private server spun up by a small-time IT guy. Maybe Trump should have burned the boxes with a hammer?
You keep mixing legal arguments with moral ones. Even if we accept that what Trump did was legal (not conceded) you have conspicuously avoided the argument that it was deeply irresponsible. there is no law of physics which says that a former president cannot injure the nation by mishandling such documents. Even if a box in a garage is not as bad as an email on a server (not conceded) you still have to admit that a box in a garage is pretty goddamn bad. And after all that shit he gave Hillary, too. Is it really such a terrible thing to hold Trump to his own standards?
If we're going with moral arguments, I'd unfortunately have to say that the verdict almost certainly rests with a set of currently unknowable facts - the exact content of the various documents in question. Given the problems of overclassification, it's actually quite tricky to determine whether, and to what extent, each of the documents really was a danger to national security. Obviously, no one is going to come out and make a public appeal in the form of, "Oh come on, all the real content of Document A was already long past sensitive, even broadly published in the NYT already," or whatever. But frankly, if we're thinking about the moral standpoint, such considerations would actually be super important, and we just don't have a clue which way that goes.
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A box in a garage is certainly worse than an email server with regards to security (and this was a particularly insecure server, we'd be better off if she had used AOL, as a country). And even that is merely Biden. A private bathroom in a residence is even more secure. Even moreso when that residence has Secret Service security forces on the premises.
There is not even a slight implication that the US was harmed by Trump's document hoarding. There are multiple experts who believe that it is implausible that multiple foreign nations do not have mirrors of Hillary's server.
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Who cares if it was irresponsible if it was legal? Are we really going to break open Pandora's Box and start indicting presidents for doing things that are irresponsible? If so, great, because I have a long list of politicians who "injured the nation"...
Come on, don't lecture me about boxes in garages when Joe Biden has the same. Maybe if you start by admitting that this whole prosecution is made-up double standards over nonsense no one really cares about, in a long line of same, all directed against Trump, I'll concede that sometimes he acts stupidly.
I'll agree that if what he did was legal, he shouldn't have been indicted. I'm not at all convinced by your argument that what he did was legal, and even if you're correct, people sometimes get indicted for doing legal things; it's just a thing that happens sometimes.
He cared about it. That's what really gets my back up. 'Crooked Hillary's emails' was like his #1 talking point back in 2016. The man is the king of double standards.
As for unfairness, I think if Trump had done what any other politician would have done, and just handed over the documents when they asked instead of being deceitful, then this whole saga ends with Trump getting a sternly worded letter and a half-dozen news articles written about him. The way Trump acted makes this a very different situation. Of course, I'll admit it's possible that in my counterfactual he gets prosecuted anyway. But then your unfairness argument would be far easier to make, wouldn't it?
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My rules > your rules, fairly > your rules, unfairly.
Your rules, fairly would imply either arresting Hillary or letting Trump go, and I don't think arresting Hillary is in the cards.
And where do "My rules, unfairly" sit on that spectrum? Trump made an absolutely massive deal out of Hillary mishandling documents and the injury to Hillary was huge (probable cause of losing the election). And now it turns out he's also been mishandling documents and people are making a massive deal out of it and suddenly Mr. "lock her up" is all about forbearance and even application of the law? Even if the basic argument about fairness is true, can you explain to me why I should feel one jot of sympathy for this massive hypocrite?
If politician X in state Y gets prosecuted for smoking weed even though in state Y almost no-one ever gets prosecuted on straight possession, then yeah I would be upset at what I would see as a politically motivated prosecution. If, however, politician X also campaigned like mad to keep weed illegal and made tons of political hay by pointing out that his opponent smoked weed in college? Man, fuck that guy with a stick.
This is the kind of distortion that the news media often makes: giving two separately true statements and implying that there's a connection between them. (Actually, I'm not even sure the injury was huge, but let's assume it was). To the extent that Hillary was injured, it wasn't because Trump specifically complained about what she did.
Trump may have talked about Hillary's documents, but he didn't get her jailed or even arrested and, in fact, had no power to do so. So you don't get to invoke unfairness if you want Trump to be jailed. You can invoke it if you think that Trump is talking about Hillary's crimes but Democrats aren't talking about Trump's crimes, but that's obviously absurd.
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Obstruction to me seems like a much bigger issue.
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