Quote (Handcuffs @ Jun 10 2023 11:23am)
Your post completely leaves out his obstruction and lack of compliance with subpoenas, to include Trump communicating with his attorneys in actively giving false certification and an original desire to outright lie about him possessing classified documents in the first place.
The "classification" issue is not even that relevant to the actual charges, as they're not necessarily going after him for possession of classified documents, but instead are going after him for the obstruction, mishandling, and unlawful retention of classified documents. Conservative defense talking points get lost in the weeds about the PRA and the Espionage Act and about Presidential ability to declassify documents, but there's two issues with that, namely: 1) That the simple possession of them is not what prosecutors are charging him with, and 2) The 1972 Atomic Energy Act prevents Presidents from declassifying documents related to the country's nuclear security--and there are documents that were recovered from this process that do include nuclear security. It is why '18 U.S. Code ยง 793 - Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information' is the first charge on the indictment:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793To argue that this is a "dumb" and "victimless crime" is simply inaccurate. Foreign relations are jeopardized when situations like this demonstrate the impropriety of our government in handling classified information that puts the national security of other nations at risk.
Possession
is what USC 793 covers and what they're charging him with, whether or not other aggravating elements are present- and they are equally applicable to cases like Hillary/Biden/Pence. If they excluded the simple possession cases, they wouldn't have 37 charges. You can say they overreached by going after those in addition to the obstruction charges, but now that they have, its going to be very hard for prosecutors to walk it back. If you charge one president with possession of classified documents, you better charge all of them.
'reputational damages' as a vague and nonspecific handwave to generate harm in a criminal proceeding is the kind of unconstitutional baloney that strips defendants of their civil rights. To prove a crime you have to prove specific elements of a crime. In civil law they can talk about hypothetical damages from unknowable potentials that cannot be proven or disproven, but in civil law they can also pass ex post facto laws and trample on your rights all day long. If this actually was a PRA case maybe they could even try that. But proving harm is impossible here in a criminal case, and not required for a strict liability possession charge. And without an underlying crime, what is the DoJ supposed to argue about obstruction or false certification? That they breached attorney-client privilege on the basis of 'hand motions' and 'nodding', without an underlying crime to justify the investigation let alone invasive measures (even raiding his home)- and they didn't even turn up the supposed files in that exchange and can't prove they existed- all to come away with some invented process crime like its Michael Flynn 2.0? c'mon
The takeaway at the end of all this is even if you buy the prosecution's narrative and do not question their legal theory or evidence, they're still only accusing Trump of harmlessly bragging to randos about materials that had no effect on anyone- most likely documents about Mark Milley being a worthless shithead on Russia and Ukraine policy. They're not accusing him of a high crime, treason, bribery, corruption, maliciousness, etc. They're accusing him of committing a dumb crime with no victims. And on that basis, they have plunged our country into the heart of the most perilous internal threat to our democracy we've faced post civil war. I said when Hillary Clinton was being pilloried that it was better for our nation that nobody try to investigate her corruption even if she was guilty- and that was when she was a powerless loser. Now the Biden administration is threatening to bring the whole temple crashing down by pulling out the stops on persecuting his #1 political rival in the run-up to an election, and its no overstatement to say this is precisely the kind of event that could irrecoverably fracture our democracy. Nobody even cared about Hillary the moment she lost, she meant nothing. But trying to weaponize government to disenfranchise half the country?
This post was edited by Goomshill on Jun 11 2023 12:56am