If Trump hadn't been born in a Rich family wouldn't he have dropped out of high school and been working at a McDonald's all his life?
Presidential Immunity
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Total:
332
Stormy wouldn't have even said hi to him.
Will you visit Biden after he drops out of the race? Retirement can be lonely or so I have heard.
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@Greyparrot
The main reason why they CANNOT charge Trump with a campaign finance violation is because he would then be able to easily win that part of the case (due to lack of evidence), and then there would be no hush money trial....
I think they tried to pressure it at the federal level but it didn't work out, probably because some people involved were being pushed to the point of whistle blowing.
They might also have been worried that a federal charge would end up in the supreme court *easier*
Double R has the right attitude to be these types of cops:
"From my point of view the speed limit is the lower limit!" (Anakin voice)
"Then you are lost" (Obiwan voice)
Just like Trump, get them coming or get them going.
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@FLRW
If Trump hadn't been born in a Rich family wouldn't he have dropped out of high school and been working at a McDonald's all his life?
Yes.
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@Best.Korea
I doubt Biden can defeat a burger flipper at this point in the polls.
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@Greyparrot
Biden doesnt need to win the elections in order to win. He will win either way by proving that Trump is a failure.
So, in the words of Tao:
"Why stop your enemy from winning elections and failing miserably after?"
Biden doesn't need to win the elections in order to win.
Spoken like a true fascist.
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@Greyparrot
Spoken like a true fascist.
Thanks.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
So you brought subjectivity into the debateThat is incorrect.
You may not have called it that but that's exactly what you did. The central point you've been making to justify your claim that these charges are illegitimate is that the law cited doesn't match the crime. And by doesn't match the crime you mean doesn't match exactly, and therefore prosecutors are just inventing ways (aka applying thought) to draw a line between the charges and the actions.
Here is an example from post 216:
"Oh did Biden lie to the FBI", doesn't matter does it. The law you claim Trump broke doesn't say "willfully retain documents while lying to the FBI"
Well no, of course the law doesn't say that all of this must happen "while lying to the FBI" because that would be oddly specific and would thus legalize many different ways in which the same wrongdoing would principally occur. That renders the effort to outlaw such actions pointless.
Instead this law along with pretty much every law ever written is intentionally vague to guard against the creation of loopholes. Here is the law Trump is being charged with violating in the documents case:
"(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it;
So the questions here are, was he unauthorized to have the documents in question? Did he have reason to believe this information could be used to the injury of the US? Did he willfully retain and fail to deliver them to authorized personnel?
These are not complicated questions at all, so no reasonable person can argue that the answer to any of these questions is no. So what do you do instead? Pretend that the level of ambiguity here is the problem. Pretend that because there is some ambiguity on some level, well that's the problem and it means the government is engaging in corrupt lawfare.
It's an absurd argument but when defending such an absurd position that's all you got. And since that's all you got that's all you've given me to respond to. So for the sake of argument I'm pretending that you're being serious and presenting this in good faith. But you quickly show that you are not.
Your argument is essentially:P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is badP2: the charges against Trump are subjectiveC: the charges against Trump are badIt would never have assumed you would cede P2, but you said there are no objective charges which means they are all subjective; then this argument wins.
The argument wins at what? The point of putting the argument in such clear and simple terms is to demonstrate the ultimate meaninglessness of it.
Again, it is the standards of subjectivity you have set through your own arguments that I am using here which is exactly what's forcing me to argue kindergarten level philosophy.
If the level of subjectivity that qualifies here is on par with what your alleging then the same logic must be applied to all criminal charges to make a fair comparison. So any charge using any law that wasn't written for the specific allegation becomes "bad", which means all criminal charges are bad since every charge is unique in some way. And if all criminal charges are bad then these charges are bad not because they are as you call them lawfare but because they are themselves... criminal charges. It's a tautology, which is to say it is a pointless meaningless statement.
It is an absurd conclusion, but the error is in the premise that whether an act is criminal is subjective, which is your assertion; not mine.
There's a saying in legal circles: "if the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If the law is on your side, pound the law. If neither the facts nor the law is on your side, pound the table".
The curious part of this saying is the second part; "argue the law". What does that mean? Have you ever hear anyone "argue" that 2+2=4? Have you ever heard of a legal challenge to how many years a defendant must spend in jail after being sentenced to two counts each at two years a piece?
No, of course not. Because that's what a fully objective determination looks like. Whether the law properly applies to the actions alleged looks entirely different. Why do you think that is if this is all objective on the same level as 2+2?
I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.If the inference is correct they were authorized.
The question clearly presumes the inference is incorrect.
If they were elected POTUS then action and authorization are identical.
Until the person elected is no longer POTUS. At that point all the next president has to do is reclassify them in his mind and whoala, he's back in violation.
The absurdity works both ways.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok".Then it was willful.
Not according to the law.
If you believe the meaning of laws is subjective there is nothing to debate on that subject
And yet appeallate court challenges and SCOTUS oral arguments will continue to be had as they have been for all 200+ years of our country's history.
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@Double_R
Instead this law along with pretty much every law ever written is intentionally vague
There is a big difference between general and vague.
Vague is bad.
These are not complicated questions at all
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually. More authorized than vice POTUS.
Pretend that the level of ambiguity here is the problem.
No, I said that ambiguity is a problem when you used purported ambiguity to escape from the consequences of your chosen interpretation of the law.
Pretend that because there is some ambiguity on some level, well that's the problem and it means the government is engaging in corrupt lawfare.
All vagueness (which I take as identical to ambiguity in this context) is a vulnerability for corrupt (unequal) enforcement. That doesn't mean the government is always waging lawfare.
To know whether the a flaw in the law is being abused one must apply the "other shoe" test. Look around, do other people get these charges and these punishments for the same acts? and no, no matter how many times you try to tac on what you consider corollary bad acts they are always irrelevant to determining whether the law is being abused.
If legislatures want a 'crime' to be punished more harshly in conjunction with other things they should (and have) create laws defining accessory crimes that add additional punishments.
Joe Biden (among many others) retaining classified documents is the other shoe test, the government fails spectacularly, therefore this is lawfare.
As to whether the law is vague, when people impersonating officers of the court are insane enough even a well crafted law may be abused, they just pretend words mean different things entirely.
Your argument is essentially:P1: Subjectivity in legal charges is badP2: the charges against Trump are subjectiveC: the charges against Trump are badIt would never have assumed you would cede P2, but you said there are no objective charges which means they are all subjective; then this argument wins.The argument wins at what?
Inferring the conclusion....
So any charge using any law that wasn't written for the specific allegation becomes "bad", which means all criminal charges are bad since every charge is unique in some way.
Strawman
It's a tautology, which is to say it is a pointless meaningless statement.
You saw law is subjective, then say subjectivity must be fine or else law would be bad. I am not going to wear the straw.
Have you ever hear anyone "argue" that 2+2=4?
Yes.
Why do you think that is if this is all objective on the same level as 2+2?
I said nothing about levels.
I would really love to see how your "clear definition" of the law would apply to someone who shares US secrets with a foreign advasary without authorization. Cause you know, they inferred it must be ok.If the inference is correct they were authorized.The question clearly presumes the inference is incorrect.
Then they were not authorized.
If they were elected POTUS then action and authorization are identical.Until the person elected is no longer POTUS. At that point all the next president has to do is reclassify them in his mind and whoala, he's back in violation.
You can't classify public information and then physically attack people for talking about it, that is a violation of the 1st amendment; however that would be an example of how vagueness in laws could be used for lawfare. Let's examine if this law is dangerously vague:
What is to stop a prosecutor from claiming knowing that aircraft carriers exist is NDI?
Suppose they claim a model air craft carrier is "any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation"
This is an example of why the bill of rights is such an important feature of the design and why a more perfect constitution would have a hell of a lot more of that kind of thing. Twisting laws should have the highest possible chance of stepping on an enumerated right so that it is difficult.
Joe Biden didn't "think it was ok".Then it was willful.Not according to the law.
The imaginary, or should I say "subjective" law that says "it's not willful until and FBI agent asks you for everything you got"
If you believe the meaning of laws is subjective there is nothing to debate on that subjectAnd yet appeallate court challenges and SCOTUS oral arguments will continue to be had as they have been for all 200+ years of our country's history.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.
There are certainly flaws in our legal code, but what we are seeing now are not flaws acting on their own but flaws that are being exploited. Those "loopholes" you referred to are often baked in by the state to be used by the state against "troublemakers".
This is the first time they've decided to subvert a federal election with the kind of attacks they've used against "troublemakers" for a long time.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually.
The crime occurred in 2021. Trump wasn't POTUS.
To know whether the a flaw in the law is being abused one must apply the "other shoe" test...Joe Biden (among many others) retaining classified documents is the other shoe test, the government fails spectacularly, therefore this is lawfare.
It really does just come down to this. You are incapable of telling different things apart from each other when it's inconvenient.
Once again, Biden realized he had them, returned them immediately, then cooperated fully giving the FBI full access to any location which more classified documents could have possibly been stored.
Trump kept these documents in storage, lied to the FBI about having them, moved them from one location to another so the FBI wouldn't find them, ordered the footage destroyed, then when that employee refused he ordered another to flood the room destroying the footage on the process.
There is no world in which these two things are remotely similar. No honest halfway intelligent person would conclude otherwise.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.
The difference between a statement being objective or subjective in many cases comes down to definitions. If two people are defining a term the exact same way, then whether the sentence formed matches reality can be determined objectively.
Laws don't work this way and they never will because the precise meaning of the pages upon pages of texts will always be subject to interpretation. If it were possible to read the minds of every passage's author and the minds of every lawmaker who helped conceive of them and vote on them then maybe we could call the following interpretations objective, that's not how real life works.
You love to pretend that when I explain to you how reality works I'm somehow endorsing the limitations of humanity. That's just stupid. The question isn't whether this problem exists but how we overcome it. That's the part I would love to get to but people liked you aren't interested in that because you can't defend your position so you'd rather stay right here pretending that I'm arguing 'subjective = good' than to defend your absurd position that what Trump and Biden did are the same.
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@Double_R
How they were treated by a weaponized DOJ was far less similar than their alleged crimes.
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@Greyparrot
How they were treated by a weaponized DOJ was far less similar than their alleged crimes.
They were treated differently because their crimes were different. That's how it works. That's how it's supposed to work. If Trump had returned the documents when he was made aware of them the way Biden did we wouldn't be having this conversation. Why that is so difficult for you it's befuddling, this is really simple stuff.
If there was ever proof that the problem here is MAGA, this is it.
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@Double_R
Let us hope Trump learns from Biden that lawfare is deeply unpopular with the American people. A wild hope, but a hope nonetheless.
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@Greyparrot
I just explained how it is not lawfare. As usual, you have no response to that except to just keep pretending.
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@Double_R
Okay, then we won't have to worry that Trump will exercise lawfare since it does not exist.
We will stop pretending Trump will do exactly the same thing, since lawfare does not exist. One less thing for us to worry about.
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@Greyparrot
Do you even read my responses, or just see that words were typed and respond to the argument you wanted me to make?
The documents case isn't lawfare. Do you understand?
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@Double_R
Well they weren't before people went insane with TDS. POTUS is authorized, as authorized as possible actually.The crime occurred in 2021. Trump wasn't POTUS.
If there was even a hint that the authorization expired every POTUS would explicitly declassify anything that they happened to have in their possession (and anything that they might want to know later) before the end of term.
They changed the rules of the game to GET TRUMP, as can be proven by Biden thinking he did nothing wrong and Clinton not even having to provide a list of documents to investigators.
Once again, Biden realized he had them, returned them immediately
This is unbelievable on the face and false based on recorded conversations with the ghostwriter.
Trump kept these documents in storage, lied to the FBI about having them, moved them from one location to another so the FBI wouldn't find them, ordered the footage destroyed
All of these probably false accusations are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a serial rapist is speeding or mother Theresa. If you charge one but not the other when they are both going above the speed limit that is unequal application of the law which is not Rule of Law.
There is no world in which these two things are remotely similar.
There is, it is the world implied by your claim that knowingly possessing documents that weren't explicitly declassified after leaving office is willful retention and a crime.
In that world, they are similar in that they both crimes of willfully retaining NDI.
It is the classic fallacy of the subjectivist to confuse the possibility of error or imprecision with a fundamental subjectivity. The ability of a human being to confuse himself over addition, to define it awkwardly, and insist 2+2 = 5 is not proof that math is subjective.The difference between a statement being objective or subjective in many cases comes down to definitions. If two people are defining a term the exact same way, then whether the sentence formed matches reality can be determined objectively.
I won't disagree with that, provided the definition is subject to objective evaluation (logic and possibly evidence).
Laws don't work this way and they never will because the precise meaning of the pages upon pages of texts will always be subject to interpretation.
Objective definitions are subject to interpretation, but if the definitions are objective then the interpretations can differ only by human error.
Again, I am not saying the laws of the United States or any government are in whole or in any small part entirely objectively defined. I am saying that if you catch someone switching interpretations depending on the subject (or any irrelevant factors) you know they are maneuvering outside the objective meaning of the law (if any). If the law is vague what they are doing may be hard to prove from the letter of the law, but even bright clear lines mean nothing to the sufficiently brazen corrupter.
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@Greyparrot
Okay, then we won't have to worry that Trump will exercise lawfare since it does not exist.We will stop pretending Trump will do exactly the same thing, since lawfare does not exist. One less thing for us to worry about.
Something tells me suddenly lawfare will exist when Trump is holding the gun. Suddenly every prosecutor will be corrupt. Every witness threatened. Every piece of evidence planted.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
It's basically the same argument about election fraud. It's impossible to do, so we don't have to worry when Trump counts the votes.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
There is, it is the world implied by your claim that knowingly possessing documents that weren't explicitly declassified after leaving office is willful retention and a crime.
How is it that after all of these months of debating this you are still fundamentally ignorant on what the basic charges against Trump are?
The charge here is not that he had them and he knew he had them. It's that he had them, knew he had them, and refused to give them back when asked.
Having possession of something that isn't yours is not necessarily wrong, that depends on the circumstances. When it's rightful owner asks for it back and you refuse, that's theft. This is common sense.
Classified documents belong to the government. When the government asked Trump for the documents back it was no longer up to him to decide whether the government gets to have them. His willful refusal to give them back, his lying to investigators, and his attempt to destroy the evidence of their whereabouts is why he is being prosecuted. Neither Biden nor any former office holder had ever done something so stupid. That's why he's being treated differently.
Trump kept these documents in storage, lied to the FBI about having them, moved them from one location to another so the FBI wouldn't find them, ordered the footage destroyedAll of these probably false accusations are irrelevant.
No, they're not. Those are what makes his retention "willful" beyond a reasonable doubt.
It doesn't matter if a serial rapist is speeding or mother Theresa. If you charge one but not the other when they are both going above the speed limit that is unequal application of the law which is not Rule of Law.
Circumstances matter. A person driving above the speed limit for the thrill of it is not the same as the person speeding to get his wife to a hospital before she bleeds out in the back seat from a pregnancy complication.
Once again, our disagreement is about balance. And again, I think there are two sides to this scale that have to be considered, you think there's only one.
Equal application of the law is important, but it is ultimately pointless of it is enforced without any thought, because laws exist for a reason and if those reasons are not going to guide us in our enforcement of them then what we end up with is not a system of justice.
What I find ironic about what you're trying to argue is that your position is essentially a pro beurocrat world view, something right wingers love to decry. The negative connotation behind that word comes from the notion of people sitting in an office making decisions based on a rule book with no regard for the real world circumstances involved in any of their decisions and therefore no regard for real world consequences of the decisions they are making. They're just following the rules. And that's the world you think we should all live in, apparently.
The problem is of course that you really don't, it's only because these rules are being enforced against Trump.
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@Greyparrot
@ADreamOfLiberty
Something tells me suddenly lawfare will exist when Trump is holding the gun. Suddenly every prosecutor will be corrupt. Every witness threatened. Every piece of evidence planted.
He has already mused to his rally crowds that he will order the indictments of his political opponents. Not because they committed crimes, but because they're his political opponents. No one who actually values democracy and the rule of law would say that to their supporters.
It's basically the same argument about election fraud. It's impossible to do
No one said election fraud is impossible, we've said there's no evidence is actually happening to the degree the conspiracy theorists claim.
so we don't have to worry when Trump counts the votes.
Uh, yeah we do, because that's not how our election system works.
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@Double_R
There is, it is the world implied by your claim that knowingly possessing documents that weren't explicitly declassified after leaving office is willful retention and a crime.How is it that after all of these months of debating this you are still fundamentally ignorant on what the basic charges against Trump are?The charge here is not that he had them and he knew he had them.
Yes it is. Read them. Look at the law. It doesn't apply because he is authorized and the origin of authority, but that is the charged law.
It's that he had them, knew he had them, and refused to give them back when asked.
So you believe it's not "willful" until someone asks for the documents?
Having possession of something that isn't yours is not necessarily wrong, that depends on the circumstances. When it's rightful owner asks for it back and you refuse, that's theft. This is common sense.
Then they should have charged him with theft. Of course he is the rightful owner, not NARA or the FBI; so that would fail basic logic tests but at least it would match what you're saying which is better than the ignorance you repeatedly display.
Classified documents belong to the government.
...
Neither Biden nor any former office holder had ever done something [not giving every document in the house] so stupid.
"He also cited the diaries that President Reagan kept in his private home after leaving office, noting that they included classified information. Contemporaneous evidence suggests that when Mr. Biden left office in 2017, he believed he was allowed to keep the notebooks in his home. In a recorded 8 conversation with his ghostwriter in April 2017, Mr. Biden explained that, despite his staffs views to the contrary, he did not think he was required to turn in his notecards to the National Archives-where they were stored in a SCIF-and he had not wanted to do so. At trial, he would argue plausibly that he thought the same about his notebooks. If this is what Mr. Biden thought, we believe he was mistaken about what the law permits, but this view finds some support in historical practice. The clearest example is President Reagan, who left the White House in 1989 with eight years' worth of handwritten diaries, which he appears to have kept at his California home even though they contained Top Secret information. During criminal litigation involving a former Reagan administration official in 1989 and 1990, the Department of Justice stated in public court filings that the "currently classified" diaries were Mr. Reagan's "personal records." Yet we know of no steps the Department or other agencies took to investigate Mr. Reagan for mishandling classified information or to retrieve or secure his diaries. Most jurors would likely find evidence of this precedent and Mr. Biden's claimed reliance on it, which we expect would be admitted at trial, to be compelling evidence that Mr. Biden did not act willfully."
Biden seems to disagree with you Double R. He seems to think that something can be personal property and classified at the same time.
Circumstances matter.
Only if they are written in the law.
A person driving above the speed limit for the thrill of it is not the same as the person speeding to get his wife to a hospital before she bleeds out in the back seat from a pregnancy complication.
and a "vagrant nigger" isn't the same as an "upstanding white man", when you let people inject their own notions of relevance that is not "rule of law".
If emergencies are a valid exception to the speed limit that should be in the law. If the severity of the offense varies with how much one is exceeding the speed limit that should be in the law.
Once again, our disagreement is about balance. And again, I think there are two sides to this scale that have to be considered, you think there's only one.
Hardly, you're defending totally unprecedented charges against a political rival on the eve of an election because you think he's terrible based on accusations by his political opponents that they obtained (recent news) through bribery and extortion.
Then, unable to look at yourself in the mirror you went on to try and justify the relevance of your subjective feelings about the man by alluding to 'circumstance' and 'discretion'. In so doing you've only managed to come up with a single analogy which has been used unjustly as all discretion will be.
There is absolutely nothing to balance here at all. There is no merit to your position that laws should remain vague and enforcement need not be equal. CERTAINLY no merit in the goal of getting Trump over framed non-crimes.
Equal application of the law is important, but it is ultimately pointless of it is enforced without any thought, because laws exist for a reason and if those reasons are not going to guide us in our enforcement of them then what we end up with is not a system of justice.
If you can make exceptions on a case by case basis when exceptions are just and rational then there is no motivation to write the exceptions into the law and then what happens when the enforces are not just and rational?
What happens when they see someone speeding for an emergency, but they don't like that person's religion or the bumper stickers on their car? Then they get detained and someone dies and the law was not violated. What are you going to do then? Make up more law? Make up fake charges against the cop so that other cops know to fail to do their job next time?
That is not rule of law. It is insanity.
If every president until now has been getting "exceptions" due to I don't know being the elected president and origin of classification authority, and whoopsie those exceptions just dried up, how is that any different?
You will NEVER convince me or any other Trump voter that your motives are pure for not excepting Trump from your so called "law against presidents having national defense information", that's why motives and bias purity is a bad way to frame a legal system. When there is no trust the system collapses.
What I find ironic about what you're trying to argue is that your position is essentially a pro beurocrat world view, something right wingers love to decry.
???
The negative connotation behind that word comes from the notion of people sitting in an office making decisions based on a rule book with no regard for the real world circumstances involved in any of their decisions and therefore no regard for real world consequences of the decisions they are making.
You and I have very different ideas about what is wrong with bureaucracy.
It's that they're making stupid rules without constitutional authority; often having less oversight than legislators themselves (not being subject to elections and appropriate judicial review).
For a decade I have been constant on this point. The solution to bad rules is certainly not to break them on whim (be it personal or mob). The solution is better rules. Any other view is insanity or corruption.
The bureaucrats I have encountered have been people who delight in their discretion, who will admit that no one follows the rules and they are the ones who decide who the troublemakers are. The petty unelected tyrants make me sick, and as bad as it would be if they enforced all of the insanely oppressive rules equally at least that wouldn't last long. The blissful ignorance of people who don't cross these degenerate scum is the shield which lets them operate.
"just following the rules" + "but only for you" = lawfare = bad
The speed limit laws as they exist would not last a single legislative session if a computer enforced them and that is exactly what should happen. If I never see a video of someone saying "don't you know who I am?" it will be too soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXaTHA6wET0
They're just following the rules. And that's the world you think we should all live in, apparently.
We should live in a world where the rules are just and practical and we will never get there if people are shielded from stupid rules by the good graces of bureaucrats (if we behave like good obedient little boys and girls).
The problem is of course that you really don't, it's only because these rules are being enforced against Trump.
I am saying that he broke no rules AND that even if there was such a rule if he was the first of many examples to actually be charged it would still be lawfare.
In the second case, you just need to move the "only": because these rules are only being enforced against Trump.
Something tells me suddenly lawfare will exist when Trump is holding the gun. Suddenly every prosecutor will be corrupt. Every witness threatened. Every piece of evidence planted.He has already mused to his rally crowds that he will order the indictments of his political opponents. Not because they committed crimes, but because they're his political opponents.
Chances that you added that last part: 99.95%
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The charge here is not that he had them and he knew he had them.Yes it is. Read them. Look at the law.
Scroll up. I literally cited the entire law and even highlighted in bold the parts that applied to this case.
It's that he had them, knew he had them, and refusedto give them back when asked.So you believe it's not "willful" until someone asks for the documents?
When someone asks for their stuff back and you refuse by lying saying you didn't have them when you did and when you take action to evade their detection and destroy the evidence of their whereabouts... There is no longer any ambiguity as to whether your retention of those documents was willful.
Of course he is the rightful owner, not NARA or the FBI;
That's just stupid. He's a private citizen, he doesn't get to declare classified documents his any more than you or I.
During criminal litigation involving a former Reagan administration official in 1989 and 1990, the Department of Justice stated in public court filings that the "currently classified" diaries were Mr. Reagan's "personal records." Yet we know of no steps the Department or other agencies took to investigate Mr. Reagan for mishandling classified information or to retrieve or secure his diaries.
The justice department made the determination that Mr. Reagan's diaries were his to keep. Last I checked the owner of something has the right to do that.
You can whine and complain about unfair treatment because of the fact that the government asked Trump for his documents back and not Reagan's, that's irrelevant to everything that Trump did afterwards.
If emergencies are a valid exception to the speed limit that should be in the law. If the severity of the offense varies with how much one is exceeding the speed limit that should be in the law.
You can't write every exception or account for every possible circumstance when crafting laws, it's not humanly possible nor is it practical in any sense. As much as you pretend (only when it applies to Trump) that human judgement and the ability to recognize that not every letter of the law violation is a spirit of the law violation and that sometimes you need to use your common sense to say 'that person shouldn't be going to jail for that', this has never been how any rule of law in any functioning society has ever worked and never will.
And again since I have to repeatedly state this, I'm not arguing for more ambiguity in the laws or a system that is entirely dependant on the whims of the enforcers, I'm talking about a practical reality that there will always be exceptions based on unforeseen circumstances. No citizen is responsible for the failure of their lawmakers to foresee the situation they might find themselves in. This is again, why we have lawyers, judges, juries, higher courts, etc.
Hardly, you're defending totally unprecedented charges against a political rival on the eve of an election
What's unprecedented are his actions. That is not the fault of the libs or whatever group you insist on demonizing. Trump is entirely at fault here, deal with it.
Then, unable to look at yourself in the mirror you went on to try and justify the relevance of your subjective feelings about the man by alluding to 'circumstance' and 'discretion'.
lol. Unable to look at myself in the mirror? That has to be projection.
The circumstances are that he lied, then obstructed. It doesn't take much subjectivity to recognize how flagrantly he violated the law and that nothing that any former president did ever came close.
Again the only reason I appealed to the need for descretion based on circumstances is because you do not have a defense of his actions so you want to make this a purely legal argument where instead of evaluating Trump's actions you evaluate how laws are enforced and then you take an extreme view that descretion cannot play any role in any law enforcement ever. It's a ridiculous position but you take it so that you can paint my argument that descretion is sometimes necessary as 'all laws are enforced entirely subjectively and that's great'. It's brazenly dishonest but when you have nothing else to work with...
There is no merit to your position that laws should remain vague and enforcement need not be equal.
Exactly my point. You aren't arguing with me, you're just trying to save face by strawmanning my position to take the attention off of the absurd notion that Trump shouldn't be indicted for what he did.
If you can make exceptions on a case by case basis when exceptions are just and rational then there is no motivation to write the exceptions into the law and then what happens when the enforces are not just and rational?
If the enforcer of the law is not acting just and rational then no rewrite of the law is going to change that. A system run by humans is always going involve human judgement, so I don't know if your ideal is some sort of Terminator-esq utopia where we're all ruled by machines but whatever it is it's not reality.
That is not rule of law. It is insanity.
It's also a slippery slope. There is nothing about the natural and inevitable reality that human judgement will have to play some role in a system of law that leads down the path where the system in run entirely on poor judgement and corruption. In any society of human beings, our collective judgement will determine our fate. You cannot legislate out of that.
You will NEVER convince me or any other Trump voter that your motives are pure for not excepting Trump from your so called "law against presidents having national defense information"
Yet another strawman. I've made clear by this point that this has nothing to do with whether Trump was allowed to have those documents. This is all about the fact that when the government comes to you and tells you that those government documents you're stashing need to be returned and your response is to lie and obstruct the investigation into their whereabouts, you deserve to go to jail. That's common sense to anyone who is not victim to the MAGA cult.
You and I have very different ideas about what is wrong with bureaucracy.It's that they're making stupid rules without constitutional authority
That has nothing to do with the connotation or the definition of the word.
"an official in a government department, in particular one perceived as being concerned with procedural correctness at the expense of people's needs." - Google
Procedural correctness... As in following words on a piece of paper with no thought, no judgement, no descretion based on the real life circumstances of the people their decisions are affecting, which is exactly what you are advocating to be expanded.
You're entitled to your ideals, I'm just pointing out that it's quite a strange ideal on its own let alone one for someone on the political right.
We should live in a world where the rules are just and practical and we will never get there if people are shielded from stupid rules by the good graces of bureaucrats
Ah, so the idea is that our we punish and even imprison enough people who really did nothing wrong then that's how we'll get our lawmakers to write better laws.
Ok, that's a viewpoint you're entitled to have.
I am saying that he broke no rules AND that even if there was such a rule if he was the first of many examples to actually be charged it would still be lawfare.
Last I checked lying to the FBI and ordering the destruction of evidence is breaking rules.
He has already mused to his rally crowds that he will order the indictments of his political opponents. Not because they committed crimes, but because they're his political opponents.Chances that you added that last part: 99.95%
"Beck said: “Do you regret not locking [Clinton] up? And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?”
Trump said: “The answer is you have no choice, because they’re doing it to us.”
"Because they're doing it to us" =/= "because that's how the rule of law works"
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@ADreamOfLiberty
When someone asks for their stuff back and you refuse..
Krickbaum attempted to ask Biden about whether he was authorized to have notebooks he kept full of handwritten notes about events and items he was briefed on. "You view those as yours —" Krickbaum began to ask.
"They are mine," Biden interrupted, in one of the more defiant moments of the interview.
"Every president before me has done the same exact thing," Biden said.
"They are mine," Biden interrupted, in one of the more defiant moments of the interview.
"Every president before me has done the same exact thing," Biden said.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Imagine if Biden came out tomorrow and pardoned Trump for any investigation until after the race. That could be Biden's only hope at this point to remain in power.
The latest poll has Trump losing by 20 million votes.
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@FLRW
You mean he is losing by 20 million swing states...in fantasyland.