Quote (InsaneBobb @ Feb 17 2021 06:27pm)
What is a "national security secret"? If you're referring to Classified information, Trump can NOT release it legally.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/798Brief: It's a crime and can be prosecuted. In general, impeachment convictions either run parallel with a criminal indictment, or is in regards to officials who subvert the law to their own ends. To date, the only Impeachment trials that led to convictions were of 8 federal judges, each of which were using the bench to subvert the law, rather than uphold it.
COULD the Senate have convicted, barring Trump from running in the future? Sure! Would it have been a subversion of the legal process that may well have gotten some of them Impeached? Possibly.
What you're missing is that the president is head of the executive branch. He is the boss of the agencies that decide what information is classified. The president, by definition, cannot illegally share classified information because he is the final say on if a piece of information remains classified. There are times when he can't keep things classified, such as FOIA requests, but generally the president can declassify information at will. Additionally, by speaking or transmitting the information to somebody or everyone he gives them permission to have it, and so it cannot be an illegal transfer, again since it comes from the office that is effectively the arbiter of classification.
Trump actually did communicate sensitive information to foreign governments. Right after he took office he revealed a bunch of code words used between Israel and the UK to Putin. We actually lost a lot of communication with Israel, UK, and several other countries during his time in office because they couldn't trust him to keep a secret.
This post was edited by Thor123422 on Feb 17 2021 09:40pm