TLDR: This is not correct.

Longer TLDR: So initially, I'm not motivated to actually analyze the laws at play here, and I'm about 80-90% sure, so I'm like meh whatever, then you say this, so I'm like 'oh that is intersting,' so I go check and these particular laws definitely require criminal intent.

*I'll include key words of importance and statutes so you don't have to trust anything I'm saying, you can just look it all up and verify everything I'm saying on Google yourself if you'd like to do so*

Analysis
I. Intro
To be fair, criminal intent can be kind of complicated and might even be counter intuitive to most people. So let us go ahead and break the relevant components of a crime:
A. The physical action of the crime aka actus reus
B. The mental state required in the commission of a crime aka mens rea

Broadly speaking we have crimes that require some sort requisite mental state, which is generally referred to as criminal intent. Within the sphere of criminal intent there are generally two types of requirements depending on the crime:
A. Specific Intent
B. General Intent

Getting into all the nuances of general and specific intent is going a bit further into the weeds than we need to go, but if you find this stuff interesting it is worth while to read about the differences. I'll just note that specific intent requires an even more particularized mental state or intent than a general intent crime. How do you know which is which? Again this could end up going on way to long, so I'll just say as a good starting point, check the statute its self. A lot of criminal statutes will tell you what if any mental state they require.

Next we have strict liability. This is the standard for crimes where there is no mens rea component as a requisite for the crime. A good example would be speeding, it doesn't matter if you were intending to go 85 MPH in a 75MPH when you get pulled over. Maybe you were just rocking out to the music and not paying attention, doesn't matter. All that is required is that you were speeding and you are guilty. Speeding isn't the crime of the century, so generally people are ok with this kind of standard for something like speeding.

As we move up the ladder of seriousness in criminal offenses, and get to felonies the amount of strict liability felonies approaches zero. I say approaches, because are left with a couple of famous crimes: statutory rape aka a 30 year old having sex with a 12 year old, and polygamy / bigamy and with this crimes the only reason they are strict liability is because they have been strict liability for a very long time, and have never evolved with the times. You won't find a ton of academic modern scholarship that is going to be supportive of any kind of felony being strict liability, this is sort a legal dark ages kind of thing.

Anyway, moving to the statutes at hand. While it is true to say that Trump has been implicated with violating the Espionage Act, it is better to just state the particular and specific statutes under which the FBI has said (via the warrant) that they are investigating Trump on:
18 U.S.C. 793
18 U.S.C. 2071
18 U.S.C. 1519

So just copy paste any of these statutes into google and you should pull up a cite where you can view each of these laws. When you pull them up, what you are going to find are certain words that tip you off that there is indeed a mens rea requirement for each statute. In fact, for some of them there are even layers of criminal intent required.

Just taking 18 U.S.C. 793, as an example since it occurs first here taking these in numerical order, without even getting past the first line of text we find, ". . .for the purpose of . . ." and then just a few words later we find, ". . .with intent or reason to believe . . ." here is a quick spoiler, when you see words like, purpose, intent, knowledge, belief, willful etc. this is a tip off that we are about to get into the required criminal intent of the statute. Why? Because the language of the statute is trying to make clear that it isn't sufficient alone that an act was done, there is more required. It isn't just that you did X thing, it is that you did X thing "with intent or reason to believe Y" or that you did X thing "for the purpose of Y" etc.

In 18 U.S.C. 2071 literally the first words are, "Whoever willfully . . ."

18 U.S.C. 1519, starts out with "Whoever knowingly . . ."

Each crime involved here will require a showing of criminal intent.

Furthermore, just some basics on criminal prosecution:
(1) The prosecutor alone has the sole burden of presenting evidence to support every element of the crime
(2) And the prosecutor must prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
(3) The Defendant is not required to present any evidence to prove they are innocent.

What does this mean? It means that the U.S. government has to prove that Trump committed certain acts, and that he committed those acts with certain particular intentions. If at any time there is a question, even a not particularly persuasive question, just some question, that maybe Trump is just a disorganized idiot and didn't even realize what all documents he had. Then he is going to end up not guilty. It doesn't even have to be true, and Trump doesn't even have to present evidence or prove anything.

If a prosecutor so much as says, "look at all the evidence we presented here today for your consideration, and the Defendant could have presented evidence to demonstrate what he was trying to do, but what evidence did the Defendant present? None." this is an impermissible argument designed to shift the government's burden of presenting evidence and proving the crime back to the Defendant to prove their innocence. This will result in an objection, and most likely a mistrial, and possibly in the prosecutor never being allowed to retry the case.

Criminal cases in the U.S. are not fights where each side just needs to fight to show they are right. A criminal case in the U.S. is a situation where the government has to basically win the game by a score of 95 to 3, just to win. If the State comes in and puts on a pretty good case and makes it clear that someone probably committed a crime, but doesn't prove it overwhelmingly, that is what we call in the United States: not guilty. Liberals tend to celebrate this generally, and conservatives tend to lament it, but those shoes are about to go on the other feet in the coming months when everyone starts to realize the full implications for what is about to happen here.

Now to be clear. If the government has recorded audio of Trump on the phone talking to Putin saying, "hey buddy, how about these nuclear codes for $500 million?" obviously that is going to dynamically change this whole situation radically against Trump, but if all the FBI comes up with are some top secret documents that Trump still had in his basement, that he voluntarily allowed the government to come in, inspect, review, and make security recommendations on?

Leftists are in for a rude awakening on how this is going to play out. There are actually decent reasons why Hillary wasn't prosecuted. Proving these kinds of crimes to the extent required by U.S. law for a criminal conviction is not easy. Not impossible, but not easy.

Just like how under Obama the FBI and DoJ were "independently" pursuing Trump? Except then after years of slow news trickle and leaks about crossfire hurricane, we found out that Comey and McCabe were having meetings with Obama and Biden in the oval office where they were given explicit 'permission' to spy on and antagonize Trump? As Joe Biden would say, "C'mon, man". Merrick Garland serves at the pleasure of Biden. Every action he is taking is the Biden Administration's priorities. Nobody in the world believes that when the DoJ moves against Trump, they're doing it without some form of approval by Joe Biden. Ultimately, all actions by the DoJ and FBI are Biden's responsibility and completely within his powers to enforce or stop.
I'm not going to pretend Merrick Garland is the mastermind and let Biden give him all the blame



Except for the parts where Biden used the power of the US government to extort a foreign country and micromanage a coup, and the result was a war that killed tens of thousands, plunged us into geopolitical and economic chaos and has perhaps finally managed to end the post WW2 pax americana
all while Obama actually was using his DoJ to spy on Trump's campaign



You kept calling everyone a cultist for dismissing your wild conspiracy theories and accusations that kept turning out to be nothingburgers and total falsehoods.
The "criminalities" and "abuses of power" turned out to be completely manufactured complaints, over and over again, with no substance to the story- but plenty of criminality and abuses of power that violate norms committed by the Obama/Biden administrations and their DoJ

The Russiaburger story was fake. The Ukraineburger story condemns Joe Biden. There was plenty of abuses of the DoJ to persecute political rivals, leaking, spying on candidates and their campaigns, unmasking, intimidating journalists, and foreign corruption scandals that enriched politicians with blood money- but they all came from the Obama/Biden side, not Trumps. And here we are with the next Trump story being swallowed hook line and sinker, even as we see clear examples of the Biden DoJ violating norms and leaking, and no meat on the burger. I think somewhere around "Trump misfeeding Koi fish" we already jumped the shark

was trump going to sell nuclear information?

Based on what we know right now, there's no evidence that he sold, or was planning to sell, nuclear information. Being the grifter he is, combined with the company he keeps, I wouldn't put it past him, but there is no current proof he did anything of the sort.

fair, I was just curious. Trump has certainly shifted in his public view. It feels like he's doing things for selfish reasons. Which may have always been the case but the contrast between 2016 trump and 2022 trump,. day and night. He also lost a large crowd of people with operation warp speed. He get's boo'd at rallies when he talks about it.

I think it's time for the republican party to move past trump. The maga cult will do whatever he says, so it's a volatile situation.
This mar-a-lago happening before the midterms is totally politically motivated.

---
Months back Trumps Lawyer allowed the fbi to look around mar-a-lago and they claim they saw some material. This is what enabled them to do the raid.
Read the affidavit.
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/22267178/mar-a-lago-search-warrant-affidavit.pdf

This post was edited by Mondain on Aug 27 2022 01:00pm

The only one of those statutes that meets your premise (based on what is public knowledge at the moment) is § 1519. There is nothing public yet that confirms obstruction (which would require intent).

The burden for 2071 can be met by "willful removal of records filed or deposited with....any judicial or public officer of the United States". We know it was willful removal, because if it wasn't, it wouldn't have taken almost 19 months to get it back.

You're simply wrong about 793. Subsections D and E have parts that specifically state "OR willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it". Subsection F calls out stuff that would apply to TS/SCI information (since that MUST be stored in a SCIF).

Trump REALLY needs to find better lawyers...

Yeah,.. It reminded me of how alex jones lawyer sent entire phone data.

Same story as Michael Flynn really. Any good faith cooperation and friendliness with the FBI will be rewarded with a boot up your ass
I can't understand why anyone anywhere in America doesn't immediately treat the presence of FBI agents as a hostile threat

TLDR: My premise, which is stated clearly in my TLDR is that these statutes require criminal intent. I was responding to a poster that indicated that there was no criminal intent required. That is the context of my post.

To be clear the point of my post is NOT to analyze these statutes and then conclude that the government can or cannot prove them. Personally I speculate the government will run into problems on this front, but that isn't the point of my post. Nor am I doing a comprehensive analysis of the statutes vs. what we know. The point is simply that these statutes do require criminal intent.

As to whether or not the evidence will be sufficient to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the requisite criminal intent is fulfilled is an open debate.

If your trying to argue that these statutes don't require criminal intent, you didn't read my post, at all.

If your trying to argue that the required criminal intent can and will be proven, maybe, maybe not. My post was specifically responding to someone who said that criminal intent was not something the government was going to have to establish and this is just incorrect.

Doing a full analysis of each statute and the various strengths and weaknesses based on what we know would be an entirely different analysis.





Trump is just bumbling along and doesn't really know what he is doing, he is disorganized, he is chaotic. Is it really shocking that he wouldn't have the good sense to hire competent counsel?

This post was edited by softcoresux on Aug 27 2022 02:05pm