I think these whole "classified documents" scandals are dumb. I imagine the "classified document" label is thrown around pretty easily and these documents are fairly innocuous. Like, really, these documents sitting in Vice-President Biden's old UPenn office are some sort of real national security threat? Seems dubious. Makes me think if you served any real amount of time in the federal government at any seriously high level, you probably have some documents that qualify as "classified" somewhere they shouldn't be, at your home or office or wherever. Now it's an easy pretext to get someone in trouble or charge them with a crime. One of those 3,000+ federal crimes we've got. A real "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime" situation.
The difference? Trump lied and said he didn't have any...then refused to return the docs. Biden's team notified the Archives, then turned the docs. over the next day.
This is on the verge of becoming thread worthy. I think the self reporting end up making it a nothing burger.
the difference? Biden had SCI documents squirreled away. Trump had classified Christmas cards™ squirreled away. /jk
Intent is still the difference maker for these kind of cases. You can walk out the white house with nucular codes and claim "whoopsie! I'm old and dint know!". If they can't genuinely prove otherwise, then you'll more or less get off with a suspended sentence or a house arrest. But I'm all for reducing Presidential powers or increasing oversight. It's just that all this isn't really for that intended goal.
There are various levels of classified documents. There are regulations about what would qualify. I'm not positive how much leeway there is, but it certainly isn't something random or innocuous in many cases. For instance TS SCI has the following description. Sensitive compartmented information (SCI) is a type of United States classified information concerning or derived from sensitive intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_compartmented_information So that is by definition not innocuous. There have been people's whose lives were endangered by careless handling of classified or previously classified material. We know that after Trump released sensitive material our allies with knowledge of workings of ISIS were potentially exposed, and had to be removed. https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...0c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html American intelligence agencies had to extract an agent doing intelligence work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump's_disclosures_of_classified_information I don't think anyone is claiming that all of the documents were this critical, but certainly they could have been. Again, anything TS SCI would have posed a potential threat. It is reckless to dismiss this potential risk simply because it feels like or you guess it is probably something trivial. These classifications aren't issued as means to try and trap people. However, there is a history of documents being classified not for security reasons but to avoid embarrassment of an administration. That is an abuse of the system. I'm in favor of cracking down on those instances. It still doesn't justify breaking the law and mishandling the material.
I'd like to quote this just to emphasize it for those that are going to compare the Trump situation to the Biden situation. Trump Claimed the document were his National Archives coordinated with Trump's to get documents back, Trump's team did not provide them back immediately. National Archives took legal action after repeated efforts. Trump claimed he declassified them even though he didn't. Trump decided to make a huge deal out of something trivial. Just follow the ****ing rules you idiot. Added drama so Trump could muddy the waters I suppose. Biden Documents found by lawyers. Immediately got in touch with National Archives. Documents returned the next day. No unnecessary drama, just return the documents. I hope my conservative compadres (@basso, @Commodore, @HTM, @StupidMoniker, @tinman, @Salvy, @SuraGotMadHops, etc) don't try to compare the situation as remotely the same. EDIT: Who gives a **** if the classified documents contained Trump's McDonalds order. Just return the ****ing documents.
Strawman. Nobody claimed some documents shouldn't be designated classified for kept confidential. Those documents of course exist. The problem is we very rarely know the nature of the classified documents at issue and very many of these could be seen as innocuous by reasonable people. We just got the buzzword "classified" and it puts everyone in a tizzy. It doesn't put me in a tizzy. Unless I'm privy to further explanation of the nature of the documents. I imagine "classified" is broadly used and likely used far too easily. One classified document could be the list of all U.S. intelligence sources in Afghanistan. Another classified document could be the Vice Presidents 3rd alternate motorcade route from when he visited Santa Fe, New Mexico one time in 2016. I suspect there's a hell of a lot more of the latter then the former. Seeing as Biden, Trump and Hillary have all had their problems with this issue, I imagine it's quite easy to violate this law and if you looked hard enough, you could probably find violations by everyone who held any serious level of authority in any administration since the law was enacted. Now, it appears to be largely media/political "gotcha" and not something that is truly rooted in the protection of people's lives or our national security interests.
This is false. Ask anyone who has ever worked on a military base. Mishandling documents, especially taking them home, is cause for prosecution. You shouldn't assume that classification doesn't exist for a reason and expecting them to be mishandled takes a pretty low view of the government.
That's one way to interpret, "Seriously high level" but a disingenuous one. I assume that classification is broadly and easily given and the vast majority of the information would be perfectly fine if it became public knowledge.
