Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:02pm)

You know its possible to oppose something politically and morally and ethically, but not criminally?
Raiding the homes of your political opponents and trying to lock them in prison is the first recourse of tyrants in a banana republic.
If you don't like the way Biden exercises the powers granted to him in an election by the American people, there's another election in 2 years, that's the recourse, that's the safety valve baked into the republic.

Remember the whole 'unmasking' saga as Obama spied on Trump? Obama could have just gone and declassified it all with a word, he could have sent a copy of Michael Flynn's phone transcripts to the New York Times. It wouldn't be a criminal act, and at least he'd be owning up publicly to what he was doing anyway (probably actually did sent a transcript to the NYT).

The framers of our constitution intentionally based the powers of the executive upon the powers of monarchs, making sure they were constrained by the separation of powers and keep away from writing laws and deciding controversies. But the powers reserved to the president are absolute. Those who enforce his policies serve at his pleasure, with powers delegated by him, not their own. When it comes to classification and declassification, the president is the king, his word law. And unless Joe Biden wants to join the ranks of despots of old who wielded their authority to lop the head off their predecessor, nobody has authority to challenge the president's plenary powers.

Quote (Surfpunk @ Aug 26 2022 11:11am)

JFC, you're being willfully obtuse. At 12:01 pm, January 20, 2021, he no longer had that authority. That authority passed to Joe Biden at that point. And as I've already covered earlier, whether the information was classified or not has no bearing on the illegality of him possessing that information once he was a private citizen. Removal of classification by POTUS doesn't change the information within those documents, nor their ability to harm the national security of the United States.

Quote (Surfpunk @ Aug 26 2022 01:11pm)

JFC, you're being willfully obtuse. At 12:01 pm, January 20, 2021, he no longer had that authority. That authority passed to Joe Biden at that point. And as I've already covered earlier, whether the information was classified or not has no bearing on the illegality of him possessing that information once he was a private citizen. Removal of classification by POTUS doesn't change the information within those documents, nor their ability to harm the national security of the United States.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:22pm)

1) there's no evidence to prove or disprove whether Trump verbally declassified it at that point
2) there's zero legal precedent on how to resolve a claim of how a former president exercised his powers, without such evidence
3) there's zero legal precedent on how a president's powers apply after leaving office to matters which he claims to have weighed in upon, without contradiction

Some 150 pages ago in this thread I already pointed out how that's where the legal case goes from the realm of "legal precedent clearly on the side of Trump" into "no legal precedent at all". That's totally untested waters of law, because no sane and functioning society would ever have such a pissy and vindictive slapfight brought by one administration against their predecessor. Remind me of my American history, when Thomas Jefferson brought complaint that John Adams had delivered writs of new judicial commissions after his term in office had legally ended, did Thomas Jefferson initiate a criminal prosecution against 'private citizen Adams' and lock him in a gibbet in the middle of tristram? What a turn of Marbury v Madison that would have been. Instead of making it into a personal, criminal banana republic, our courts hashed out the legal standard and set judicial constitutional review in motion. Imagine that, civil disagreement solved by legal remedy. Not "lock him up"

Truly, democrats are the party of projection

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:22pm)

1) there's no evidence to prove or disprove whether Trump verbally declassified it at that point
2) there's zero legal precedent on how to resolve a claim of how a former president exercised his powers, without such evidence
3) there's zero legal precedent on how a president's powers apply after leaving office to matters which he claims to have weighed in upon, without contradiction

Some 150 pages ago in this thread I already pointed out how that's where the legal case goes from the realm of "legal precedent clearly on the side of Trump" into "no legal precedent at all". That's totally untested waters of law, because no sane and functioning society would ever have such a pissy and vindictive slapfight brought by one administration against their predecessor. Remind me of my American history, when Thomas Jefferson brought complaint that John Adams had delivered writs of new judicial commissions after his term in office had legally ended, did Thomas Jefferson initiate a criminal prosecution against 'private citizen Adams' and lock him in a gibbet in the middle of tristram? What a turn of Marbury v Madison that would have been. Instead of making it into a personal, criminal banana republic, our courts hashed out the legal standard and set judicial constitutional review in motion. Imagine that, civil disagreement solved by legal remedy. Not "lock him up"

Truly, democrats are the party of projection

Quote (Surfpunk @ Aug 26 2022 01:29pm)

That was a whole lot of words that have fuck-all to do with US Code with regard to that information. It doesn't matter if it was classified or not. TFG, as a private citizen, retained possession of information that lawfully belongs to the US government, and was given OVER A YEAR to return it.

Quote

There was more than sufficient attempts to "solve a civil disagreement via legal remedy".

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:22pm)

1) there's no evidence to prove or disprove whether Trump verbally declassified it at that point
2) there's zero legal precedent on how to resolve a claim of how a former president exercised his powers, without such evidence
3) there's zero legal precedent on how a president's powers apply after leaving office to matters which he claims to have weighed in upon, without contradiction

Some 150 pages ago in this thread I already pointed out how that's where the legal case goes from the realm of "legal precedent clearly on the side of Trump" into "no legal precedent at all". That's totally untested waters of law, because no sane and functioning society would ever have such a pissy and vindictive slapfight brought by one administration against their predecessor. Remind me of my American history, when Thomas Jefferson brought complaint that John Adams had delivered writs of new judicial commissions after his term in office had legally ended, did Thomas Jefferson initiate a criminal prosecution against 'private citizen Adams' and lock him in a gibbet in the middle of tristram? What :bonk: a turn of Marbury v Madison that would have been. Instead of making it into a personal, criminal banana republic, our courts hashed out the legal standard and set judicial constitutional review in motion. Imagine that, civil disagreement solved by legal remedy. Not "lock him up"

Truly, democrats are the party of projection

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:33pm)

Except he didn't. He decides whether its classified or not, and no code or procedure or formal ritual can infringe on that plenary power.



There was no civil disagreement to remedy. It makes absolutely zero difference to the running of our government whether Donald Trump is allowed to retain his signed autographs of Kim Jong Un and cocktail napkins he scribbled on.

Quote (Goomshill @ Aug 26 2022 01:33pm)

Except he didn't. He decides whether its classified or not, and no code or procedure or formal ritual can infringe on that plenary power.



There was no civil disagreement to remedy. It makes absolutely zero difference to the running of our government whether Donald Trump is allowed to retain his signed autographs of Kim Jong Un and cocktail napkins he scribbled on.

Quote (Surfpunk @ Aug 26 2022 11:11am)

JFC, you're being willfully obtuse. At 12:01 pm, January 20, 2021, he no longer had that authority. That authority passed to Joe Biden at that point. And as I've already covered earlier, whether the information was classified or not has no bearing on the illegality of him possessing that information once he was a private citizen. Removal of classification by POTUS doesn't change the information within those documents, nor their ability to harm the national security of the United States.