Quote (Goomshill @ Jun 10 2023 04:07pm)
That falls apart because 1) that's a common element with the Hillary Clinton case, because she destroyed evidence to try to 'obstruct justice' and 2) The prosecutors are not specifically charging only in the case of the documents they could not find nor just the cases of Trump on tape talking about them being secret, they're charging for all the documents, the rest without such elements. And that would hold Biden and Pence being guilty, since the charge doesn't require obstruction, rather the strict liability of possessing classified materials without authorization. They retrieved documents from Biden's house after he said there were none, just the same.
We don't know how many people Donald Trump had murdered and how many bodies he made disappear and covered up without a trace, either. When you charge a crime with no evidence of harm, you can't allege unknown harms from it. That's just baseless speculation.
Showing classified documents to randos without authorization doesn't seem as harmful as showing classified documents to hostile Chinese hackers who got in your email server.
But Trump already possessed the knowledge of those documents and was free to tell people exactly what was on them, and while president he had total plenary authority to declassify them and show anyone he wanted. How those powers transfer between presidents is not all a clear matter of law, never tested in courts, and can't clearly adhere to some absolutist interpretion that the successor decides everything, else we'd need each president to line-item approve/disapprove his predecessor's records as they're taken out.
Quote (IceMage @ Jun 11 2023 05:35pm)
I'll reply to this another time.
1) There was never sufficient evidence that Hillary obstructed justice. If there was, what is it?
2) The indictment only includes documents that Trump withheld. He's not even being charged with the same statute that Hillary may have been charged with. Because he willfully withheld the government documents, we don't even need to argue over mishandling classified documents. It's an entirely separate charge, which avoids all the kneejerk whataboutism nonsense.
3) There's no evidence that Hillary's server was hacked by the Chinese. You state it as fact, and that's all the more reason to regard you as a complete Trump hack.
4) Also, the fact that you(yourself) believe Trump showing highly classified documents to randos writing a book for Mark Meadows doesn't matter, is immaterial to the question of whether it matters under US law. Last I checked, the "nothing matters" coalition that you belong to do not have a say over what laws are enforced in the United States.
5) Sure, if Trump wanted to reveal classified information as president, he may be able to do so without any clear process. But that's not the issue. He lost the election(unclear whether you admit this because you are a cultist), therefore government documents he takes home with him are not his to be revealed. Therefore, him revealing them, and particularly withholding them upon the government's request to take them back, is a violation of the law. The government's standard for whether actions violate the law are not whether you are care.