Lock Him Up !

But you obviously kinda wanna be.

 

Perhaps. But both Biden and Trump were treated exactly the same. They were both given the chance to return the documents and not be prosecuted. The paths diverge because Biden took advantage of the opportunity while Trump didn't and proceeded to commit further crimes in order to avoid returning the documents.

I use the term constructed because it is fabricated and not based on anything real. Hillary Clinton was investigated numerous times. Hillary Clinton never had documents stuffed in showers and bathrooms and other rooms with multiple accesses and doors left open. There were no different treatments. Hillary was investigated multiple times and found to not be culpable. Trump and Biden were both offered the exact same pathways to avoid further legal problems. Trump was repeatedly offered avenues to get out of being prosecuted. So there are absolutely not two sets of standards applied to Trump and to Hillary and Biden. It is something fabricated for political reasons and not based in reality.

The facts and evidence simply don't support the idea that there are two different standards applied.

 

I agree with this; I think virtually EVERYONE agrees with this. On the offer to work with the government to return the documents, that is.

that is what I suspected, and I simply disagree

as Biden would say, c'mon man! Clinton intentionally and willfully (and successfully) sought to avoid the government oversight of her activities as Secretary of State with a clearly illegal mechanism. Showers and bathrooms are WHOLLY irrelevant in terms of comparing the possession and in Clinton's case, the TRANSMISSION, of classified documents. As far as we know Trump never transmitted the documents but rather seems to have held on to them as some kind of personal trophies.

agree to disagree. On the single count of possession of classified documents, in clear violation of the Espionage Act, they are both EQUALLY culpable, blameworthy, and (presumably) guilty.

if you say so. I disagree.

 

Dave Schuler on competing perceptions of reality (WaPo vs WSJ):

http://theglitteringeye.com/whats-going-on-2/

I'll cut to the chase:

Let’s make a little list of the questions that have been raised by this matter:

• Is the Espionage Act of 1917 applicable?
• Is the Espionage Act of 1917 enforceable?
• Is the Espionage Act of 1917 “seldom-enforced” and why?
• Is the Espionage Act of 1917 constitutional?
• Is the Presidential Records Act applicable?
• Is the Presidential Records Act enforceable?
• Is the Presidential Records Act enforced and why?
• Is the Presidential Records Act constitutional?

These are matters of law, policy, and politics. Just for the record my view is that

1. Either the Presidential Records Act shouldn’t exist, the Espionage Act of 1917 shouldn’t exist, or both shouldn’t exist and
2. Intent should have nothing to do with it and
3. If the Espionage Act of 1917 applies to presidents it raises serious separation of powers issues and
4. If the Espionage Act of 1917 is applicable every living president should be indicted under it.

We already have prima facie cases that Presidents Trump, Biden, and Clinton are guilty of violating it and I think we can safely assume that every other living president has, too. Also probably hundreds of high-ranking officials past and present should be indicted for violating it. I have no problem with that.

There’s so much going on in this matter it’s hard for me to see it having been resolved before November 2024. The only way that might happen is if President Trump pled guilty and it’s hard for me to imagine that.
​

more at the link

 

It's also funny when folks like @AroundTheWorld and others claim there's somehow a double standard for Clinton and Trump. What they forget to mention somehow is one of the first things Trump did as POTUS was order a full investigation into her.

His Homeland Security and state department opened a full investigation into her and found nothing. It's just funny how short term memory right wingers have

 

You disagree with the findings of the investigations into Hillary. That's fine. But it isn't because she wasn't investigated. I feel gross having to defend her. I'm not a fan but the standard of investigating her was applied the same as it was to Trump. Trump invited people without classification clearance to look at the classified material.

To point out that at one point both Biden and Trump both had classified documents but only Trump is being prosecuted so it's two different standards ignores relevant information which disproves that.

The DOJ conducted themselves the exact same way in both cases. Had both Biden and Trump acted identically, they both wouldn't have been prosecuted. Had Biden not cooperated and broken more laws to avoid returning documents there is every reason to believe he would have been impeached and prosecuted as well.

The fact that in order for the two different standards line of reasoning to hold up means that you have to ignore the different reactions to the same and equal procedures of the DOJ is problematic.

I respect your right to hold your view. I just don't see any evidence behind it.

 

You keep posting the same things in various threads and they keep getting ignored by the usual suspects. I admire your resilience, I'd personally rather bash my left thumb repeatedly with a framing hammer.

 

with the sole exception that in one case the DOJ decided to indict, and in the other case decided not to indict.

 

since there seems to be evidence of folks' reluctance to consider that there are TWO perceptions of political reality here, I'll post the section of Dave Schuyler's post from above where he quotes directly first from the Washington Post's editorial board and then from the Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

again the full blog post is at http://theglitteringeye.com/whats-going-on-2/

I would think we can all agree with this statement from the editors’ of the Washington Post’s remarks on the federal indictment of President Trump:

Something has gone deeply wrong when, in a historic first, federal prosecutors reach the point of filing criminal charges against a former and possibly future president.
​

Here’s what they think has gone wrong:

The 38-count indictment against Mr. Trump and an aide, unsealed on Friday, includes disturbing details: “Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” the onetime commander in chief says in a transcript of a recording during which he described a “plan of attack” prepared by the Defense Department against a foreign adversary. His audience, according to the indictment, included a writer, a publisher and two members of his staff, none of whom had a security clearance. This was only one episode of gross mishandling of hundreds of pages of materials that included papers on U.S. nuclear programs and this nation’s potential vulnerabilities to attack.

Boxes were moved from a ballroom stage to a storage closet to a bathroom and shower, at one point spilling onto the floor (“Oh no oh no,” texted an employee). Mar-a-Lago hosted tens of thousands of guests at 150 social events, including weddings and movie premieres, during the time the documents were on the premises.

It’s not only the alleged cavalier treatment of classified materials. It is also the extensive effort to avoid compliance with legitimate demands, from which a clear, prosecutable picture of obstruction emerges. Consider Mr. Trump’s alleged instructions to valet and body man Waltine Nauta, also indicted, to hide boxes from his team’s attorney, the FBI and the grand jury; the suggestion to his attorney to make false representations to the FBI and grand jury as well as to conceal or destroy some of the documents called for in a subpoena; and the submission to the FBI and grand jury declaring all relevant documents had been handed over when they had not. Mr. Trump reportedly even asked after receiving a subpoena for the documents’ return: “Well look, isn’t it better if there are no documents?”
​

The editors of the Wall Street Journal on the other hand have a somewhat different view of what has gone wrong. Like the Post they open with something on which we presumably can agree:

Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, his indictment by President Biden’s Justice Department is a fraught moment for American democracy. For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President.
​

and then turn to their take on what has gone wrong:

The indictment levels 37 charges against Mr. Trump that are related to his handling of classified documents, including at his Mar-a-Lago club, since he left the White House. Thirty-one of the counts are for violating the ancient and seldom-enforced Espionage Act for the “willful retention of national defense information.”

But it’s striking, and legally notable, that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA) that allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office. It allows for good-faith negotiation with the National Archives. Yet the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.

This doesn’t fit the spirit or letter of the PRA, which was written by Congress to recognize that such documents had previously been the property of former Presidents. If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be part of Mr. Trump’s defense.

The other counts are related to failing to turn over the documents or obstructing the attempts by the Justice Department and FBI to obtain them. One allegation is that during a meeting with a writer and three others, none of whom held security clearances, Mr. Trump “showed and described a ‘plan of attack’” from the Defense Department. “As president I could have declassified it,” he said on audio tape. “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

The feds also say Mr. Trump tried to cover up his classified stash by “suggesting that his attorney hide or destroy documents,” as well as by telling an aide to move boxes to conceal them from his lawyer and the FBI.

As usual, Mr. Trump is his own worst enemy. “This would have gone nowhere,” former Attorney General Bill Barr told CBS recently, “had the President just returned the documents. But he jerked them around for a year and a half.”

That being said, if prosecutors think that this will absolve them of the political implications of their decision to charge Mr. Trump, they fail to understand what they’ve unleashed.
​

I included the rest of Schuyler's post above

 

The man has the patience of a saint...thank God for the ignore feature cause I can't do it.

 

Correct, but that ignores all the intermediate steps by actors that weren't the DOJ.

For the DOJ to have two different standards depending on the subject of the investigation, they have to proceed in two different ways.

They were the same until the reaction of subjects differed.

At that point there is no indication they would have acted differently had Biden done the same actions as Trump.

The DOJ treated both the same way until the subjects reacted differently to the same treatment.

 

Did biden call the special counsel deranged and make fun of his wife though ?

 

and on this point, for example: Mike Pence has called on Garland to explain the choice in both cases.

Pence calls for Garland to publicly justify Trump indictment

https://thehill.com/homenews/campai...garland-to-publicly-justify-trump-indictment/

excerpt:

Former Vice President Mike Pence called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to publicly justify the federal indictment against former President Trump after his former boss was charged with 37 criminal counts.

Pence said during a speech at a North Carolina GOP convention in Greensboro on Saturday that Trump is facing an “unprecedented indictment” from a Justice Department (DOJ) that is “run by” the current president, Joe Biden. He said the day of Trump’s indictment was a “sad day” for the country.

Pence said no one is above the law, but he has seen “years” of politicization from the DOJ, pointing to examples like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not facing prosecution for her use of a private email server while serving as secretary and a “hoax” of an investigation into alleged ties between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia.

He said the country has a “right” to know the “basis” of the decision to indict Trump.

“Today, I’m calling on the attorney general to stand before the American people and explain why this was necessary in his words. Attorney General Merrick Garland, stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward,” Pence said.
​

more at the link

Again, the argument is NOT that Trump has done no wrong; on the contrary, Trump is a scoundrel and deserves everything that is coming to him.

The argument is that the choice to indict/not to indict is in large measure a political decision, and one that needs explanation/justification.

If "no one is above the law," then parity of reasoning suggests Biden's indictment for violating the Espionage Act (possession) should be coming as well.

 

one other thought

my understanding--and I may be wrong, so please correct me if I'm wrong--is that 31 of the 37 charges against Trump have to do with violations of the Espionage Act. So 31 charges are for the possession of the classified documents. The same thing Biden supposedly did.

The other 6 Trump charges (or 7, I've seen totals of 37 and 38 quoted in different places) have to do with the obstruction and conspiracy charges. This therefore is (in my mind) the ONLY relevant substantive difference between the crimes Biden committed and the crimes Trump has committed.

If we are suggesting that Trump only gets indicted BECAUSE of the obstruction and conspiracy charges, fine. But then it would seem to me DOJ should drop the 31 violations of the Espionage Act to maintain parity of treatment between Trump and Biden.

I agree with you that both "subjects reacted differently to the same treatment." I also don't think anyone, anywhere disputes that.

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-h...the-indictment-of-donald-trump-hurts-america/

Three ways the indictment of Donald Trump hurts America
by Liz Peek, opinion contributor
06/10/23 12:30 PM ET

Former President Donald Trump has been indicted for illegally storing and hiding classified documents. As conservative radio host Steve Gruber describes it, the “bananafication” of our republic continues apace.

There are three reasons every American — even those of us not supporting Trump’s 2024 campaign — should find this further assault on the former president repugnant.

First, it reinforces the view, shared by many conservatives, that our government delivers a two-tiered system of justice — one for people on the right and another for those on the left. Donald Trump, after all, is not the only public official found to have mishandled secret documents. Special Counsel Jack Smith claimed, as he brought the indictment: “We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone.”

History suggests otherwise.

Former President Bill Clinton was found to have taken audio recordings of his discussions while in the White House and kept them in his sock drawer after his term was up. Judicial Watch sued to access the tapes, claiming they should be considered part of the presidential archive. But a judge ruled against the conservative group, claiming she had no jurisdiction and that such demands could only be made by the National Archives and Records Administration. NARA declined to seek the tapes.

Former FBI head James Comey concluded in 2016 that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her aides were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” which was stored on an authorized and vulnerable personal server. Further, on several occasions, Clinton appears to have destroyed evidence of that misconduct. Moreover, like Trump, Clinton did not fully comply when asked to provide all the emails that had been sent; the FBI found tens of thousands of additional “work-related” messages on that unauthorized server, some of which contained secret information.

Clinton was not indicted for her misconduct; Comey explained that Clinton’s misbehavior was not linked to “disloyalty to the United States” or “efforts to obstruct justice.” His decisions, he said, came down to evaluating her “intent.”

Joe Biden also illegally kept classified information. Instead of being indicted, news of the secret documents found at the Penn Biden Center on November 2, 2022, was mysteriously kept from the public — six days before the midterm elections. The discovery was finally “leaked” by CBS news in January.

This week’s indictment blasts Trump for carelessly storing documents in rooms accessible to unauthorized persons. Were the papers stacked in the garage of Biden’s Delaware home more secure?

To many Americans, the former president’s skirmishing with authorities over his presidential papers is classic Trump behavior — high-handed, ornery, disorganized and lazy, yes, but not criminal. The indictment chronicles his half-hearted efforts to go through the hundreds of boxes containing his personal papers; it never alleges that his refusal to comply with a subpoena was part of a bigger crime, like betraying the U.S.

Also, it seems quite possible Trump refused to turn over his Oval Office papers because he feared the FBI would mine those records for material that could embarrass him or be used against his candidacy. Such paranoia, given the findings of the report from Special Counsel John Durham, which chronicled the weaponizing of that agency to attack Trump politically, would be entirely justified.

Second, the announcement of Trump’s indictment just happened to occur on the very day that members of Congress were shown an FBI document containing credible allegations that Biden accepted a $5 million bribe from a Ukrainian company. Instead of burrowing in on claims from a trusted whistleblower that our president, as vice president, accepted payment from Burisma in return for helping to oust Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Biden’s Justice Department created a powerful distraction.

This is unacceptable. The allegations against Biden are not far-fetched. We know for a fact that Biden pushed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 to fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, threatening to pull $1 billion in U.S. aid unless he did so. We know that because Biden actually boasted about it to a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Here’s what Biden didn’t tell the council: Shokin was at the time apparently orchestrating a corruption investigation into Burisma, where Hunter Biden was being paid millions of dollars to sit on the board.

This corruption accusation casts a shadow over Biden’s presidency, undermining not only the White House but also our country’s standing on the world stage. That is unacceptable. The allegations need to be investigated transparently and speedily by the Department of Justice; unhappily, that is unlikely to happen.

Third, Biden has talked a great deal about protecting our democracy and the sanctity of open and fair elections. Call me crazy, but Biden’s DOJ indicting his most likely 2024 campaign rival on charges that, as in the case of Hillary Clinton, might or might not justify prosecution, seems to qualify as election interference. The president is running for another term; polls show his prospects are poor.

When a sitting president is struggling to get his approval ratings above 40 percent, he is in trouble. An NBC News survey from last month showed that 70 percent of voters, and more than half of Democrats, do not want Biden to run.

At the same time, surveys show Biden and Trump neck and neck in a potential match-up. Currently, the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Trump slightly ahead.

Democrats hope this most recent indictment will hurt Trump in a general election but also solidify Trump’s lead among Republicans 2024 hopefuls. They think Trump is the GOP candidate Biden can most easily beat, since he has done so before.

Biden campaigned in 2020 promising to bring the country together. Instead, he has attacked and villainized Republicans and supporters of Donald Trump, widening our divides. This is just the latest installment.

Liz Peek is a former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company.
​

​

 

I recently read “the sociopath next door” which was written pre-trump presidency. It’s amazing how it’s almost like he was going out of his way to fit the author’s exact definition of a sociopath.

#Winning

 

You underestimate the Independents and Never Trumpers. They don’t like Biden but they hate Trump