Trump is proving to the world America is the most corrupt country in the world. Why they need to make an example of Trump not being above the law is only going to expose every corrupt institution in America as Trumps litigations continues.
i suspect trump should probably be charged with obstruction for classified documents
Posts
Total:
45
-->
@Greyparrot
How about we just say Donald Trump was grossly negligent and let him go. Apply the Hillary standard
-->
@oromagi
I have yet to see a primary source or an eyewitness account of your claims... the burden of proof doesn't go away because you want it to.
The New York Times is a newspaper. Unless an actual Trump staffer or anyone else who actually witnessed anything writes an article in it, or they republish blockquotes from a linked primary source, or they publish a primary source document themselves, then it does not count as a primary source. Like... at all.
Likewise for anything else you want to use that pathologically incorrect paper as an argument for. Unless you can furnish a REAL document, to use your own favorite standard of evidence. . . "What can be stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."
The NY Times could be completely right. They could also be completely wrong. But it doesn't matter. Because if they cannot furnish any real proof of their reporting, then the burden of proof is not on me, but on the NY Times.
All newspapers and news websites are held to the same standard. Doesnt matter if the Associated Press reports something. If they cannot furnish evidence, then how do I know if it is true? I can't without going out of my way to do the work for them and find the original document.
I actually did quite a bit of that when I ran a news website for a bit. A good portion of my job was spent finding primary sources and looking at them because the press would report something in lockstep and not provide a source.
So I would find the source, read it myself, and then republish an article linking the source, quoting the source, and, in SO MANY INSTANCES, fact checking the media. Didn't matter which media it was, for the most part. I had to do their job for them because they would consistently fail to hold their articles to any standard of proof.
In fact I worked as a journalist for many years in various capacities from editor in chief to blogger to standard journalist. I am not some yokel who doesnt know anything about news. I could write manuals on how to write the news properly. I also have read some of them.
So when I ask for a primary source, please realize it is because, as a member of the news ecosystem for many years, I know just how inaccurate and downright pathologically false it can be from witnessing it myself firsthand.
-->
@oromagi
Probably because you rely on information from Epoch Times, Christian Headlines, NY Post, etc.
Actually I took classes on American government when I was in college and I have read and studied multiple founding documents (back to that primary source thing). I've read large portions of the Federalist Papers, anti-federalist papers, supreme court rulings, speeches from the time, and portions of the Constitutional Convention. So much so that I used to debate my college professors about our Constitution and hold my ground against people who had doctorates in the subject.
For the most part I do not even read The Epoch Times anymore because they have become so disgustingly pro-Trump that it is hard to look at them the same way anymore.
I cited the Christian Headlines article because the person links and block quotes the Constitutional Convention and the Federalist Papers. In other words, he actually makes a rational claim using primary source documents for his arguments. Not anonymous sources, lawyers, and other secondary sources, which can be used to make any bullshit flavor-of-the-month claim.
You start with Trump's claims and work your way towards confirming information rather than vice-versa.
Not true. 90% of the time I start with the Media's claims and then go out and find the original source and read what it says for myself, using all the proper tools available, including specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias when necessary.
I don't rely on the New York Times to do my thinking for me. I think for myself.
-->
@Public-Choice
As far as what Oromagi said, what was the original source? Because from what I understand Flynn lied to Trump and that was why Trump ousted him. Flynn also received money from Russia, like tens of thousands of dollars in money from Russia. It could have been Trump had no idea this happened, or he knew and didn't care. Who knows. I need the original source.
Remember that Flynn was a lifelong Democrat and US Army Intelligence bigwig out of Ft Bragg, AIrborne div
Reprimanded in 2010 for sharing intel w/ Pakistan
Only high-ranking US intelligence official to ever be invited inside Russian Intel HQ
In 2014, Intel expressed concerns regarding Flynn's close association with a woman known to be a Russian spy
Obama forces Flynn to retire a week later. Flynn also retires from the military and starts "consulting" with foreign govts.
Wikipedia:
- Flynn was paid more than $65,000 by companies connected to Russia in 2015, including $11,250 each from Volga-Dnepr Airlines and the U.S. subsidiary of Kaspersky Lab. Other clients included Palo Alto Networks, Francisco Partners, Brainwave Science and Adobe Systems.
Foreign agent
- In July 2016, Flynn spoke at a meeting of ACT! for America when the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was underway. He spoke favorably of the coup participants, saying that Erdoğan had been moving away from a secular state and towards an Islamist state, and that participants in the coup wanted Turkey to be and to be seen as a secular—a goal "worth clapping for".
- By the end of September 2016, Flynn's consulting company was hired by Inovo BV, a company owned by Kamil Ekim Alptekin, the Chair of the Turkish-American Business Council, which is an arm of the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey (DEIK). The company has links to President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Flynn was paid $530,000 by Alptekin for Flynn's lobbying work. Flynn only registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department later on March 8, 2017, for the work completed by November 2016. Flynn acknowledged his work may have benefited Turkey's government.
Got that? While Flynn was acting as Trump's primary adviser on foreign affairs, he reversed his position on the Turkish dictator after Turkish govt. paid him at least half a million dollars. He is an American General who did not report his contact with the Turkish govt or the money paid him to the Pentagon or the State Dept even though it is a felony for him to not report.
- On March 24, 2017, former Director of the CIA James Woolsey said that in September 2016 Flynn, while working for the Trump presidential campaign, had attended a meeting in a New York hotel with Turkish officials including foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and energy minister Berat Albayrak, son-in-law of Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and had discussed abducting Fethullah Gülen and sending him to Turkey, bypassing the U.S. extradition legal process.
- American General plotting kidnappings on US soil for dictators
- Flynn sat in on classified national security briefings with then-candidate Trump at the same time that Flynn was working for foreign clients, which raises ethical concerns and conflicts of interest. Flynn was paid at least $5,000 to serve as a consultant to a U.S.-Russian project to build 40 nuclear reactors across the Middle East.
- On November 18, 2016, Flynn accepted Trump's offer for the position of National Security Advisor.
- During their meeting in the Oval Office two days after the election, Obama expressed "profound concerns" about placing Flynn in a sensitive, high-level national security post, and warned President-elect Trump against hiring Flynn.
- On January 4, 2017, Flynn informed transition team counsel Don McGahn, soon to become the White House Counsel, that he was under federal investigation for secret lobbying work he had done for Turkey during the campaign. [Anybody believe that McGahn would have failed to tell Trump that his NSA director was being investigated for being a Russian spy? Trump says nobody told him.]
Documenting Flynn's son starting the Pizzagate story, which became QAnon. Flynn founded QAnon.
AP NEWS, Jan 13th: Top Trump aide in frequent contact with Russia’s ambassador
Trump can't say it wasn't public knowledge after this. Obama administration had tapped Russia's top spy Kislyak and he'd been speaking to Flynn frequently, getting/giving advice about sanctions, Trump policy.
- Ten days before the inauguration of Donald Trump, Flynn told then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice not to proceed with a planned invasion of Raqqa using Kurdish People's Protection Units.
So Flynn knew Trump was going to fuck over our allies, Kurds some three years before Trump did. Interesting.
- Comey sends FBI agents to get Flynn on the record before the inauguration. Flynn lies or says "don't know" about everything. Comey goes to the AG, AG goes to Trump on Jan 27th and tells him that the top US Spy is lying about his secret interactions with the top Russian Spy.
- Jan 30, Trump fires AG
- Flynn spends his two weeks in office almost exclusively interested in Ukraine. Russia delivers a "Ukraine Peace plan" which included overthrow of Ukrainian govt and surrender of east Ukraine and Black Sea Coast to Russia, which Flynn gives to Trump on his last day in office.
- Trump continues to state that he has full confidence in Flynn, knowing that Flynn has lied to the FBI and Trump had covered up for him.
- On Feb 14th, Trump accepts Flynn's resignation stating that Flynn had lied to Pence, never mind that Trump could have told Pence the truth about Flynn's lies for three weeks.
- Trump pressures Sessions and Comey not to investigate Flynn and Russia. Fires Comey when Comey flat out refuses to refrain from investigating.
- Flynn confirms some payments from Russia and Turkey in March and registers as a foreign agent.
- As the Hon Emmett Sullivan put it at Flynn's sentencing hearing
- "All along, you were an unregistered agent of a foreign country while serving as the national security advisor to the president of the United States,” Sullivan told Flynn, referring to the other case, for which Flynn was not charged. That undermines everything this flag over here stands for....you sold your country out I’m not hiding my disgust, my disdain, Hypothetically could he have been charged with treason?”
- Trump pardoned Flynn
-->
@oromagi
Do you, like, have a pathological aversion to original sources? Like? Am I debating a bot account right now?
All those articles did not give any ORIGINAL sources. They all, therefore, do not count as original sources.
I asked for primary sources. I think you need a refresher course in such a thing. Unless you can tell me which people were coted who had firsthand experience in the topic, then the news articles you sent me are not actually proving anything.
It's very simple, Oromagi. The burden of proof demands actual sources, not claims by news outlets, but actual evidence.
-->
@oromagi
The reason I am asking for original sources is because, without them, whatever you or the news claims is not proven.
You could be completely right. Or you could be completely wrong.
But either way, without actual evidence this is impossible to determine.
So that is why I keep asking for it.
-->
@Public-Choice
-->@oromagiDo you, like, have a pathological aversion to original sources? Like? Am I debating a bot account right now?All those articles did not give any ORIGINAL sources. They all, therefore, do not count as original sources.I asked for primary sources. I think you need a refresher course in such a thing. Unless you can tell me which people were coted who had firsthand experience in the topic, then the news articles you sent me are not actually proving anything.It's very simple, Oromagi. The burden of proof demands actual sources, not claims by news outlets, but actual evidence.
dodging.
You give me christianheadlines and some blog, I give you Wikipedia, AP news, and politico and you have the temerity to complain about sources. Besides which, there's nothing here that hasn't been headline news in the media for years. Any informed person has this information. Flynn has confirmed most of these facts under oath.
I'll assume you're quibbling for want of contention.
-->
@Public-Choice
i dont claim to know the laws and sources inside and yet, but it looks like with what's established, there is a serious legal question if Trump were able to use the classified material as he did....
Codified at 18 U.S.C. § 798, it prohibits knowingly disclosing “to an unauthorized person,” publishing, or “us[ing] in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States” a variety of classified information.
The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority."The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’" according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. "His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant."Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, said that "if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues."
what we see, is that trump has default authority to classify at will. but even your article says only that there would be serious constitutional issues if a statute were passed. a statute was passed, which is cited above. we might assume that trump shouldn't be using classified material in a way that is detrimental to the USA. this is of course a judgment call, so executive authority and privilege would be here, but it's at best a murky issue.
also, even if trump was cleared legally for what he did, you have to admit, that it at least sounds like he did the wrong thing by taking and hoarding those documents, right? just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
-->
@n8nrgim
what we see, is that trump has default authority to classify at will. but even your article says only that there would be serious constitutional issues if a statute were passed. a statute was passed, which is cited above. we might assume that trump shouldn't be using classified material in a way that is detrimental to the USA. this is of course a judgment call, so executive authority and privilege would be here, but it's at best a murky issue.also, even if trump was cleared legally for what he did, you have to admit, that it at least sounds like he did the wrong thing by taking and hoarding those documents, right? just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
Trump had the authority to declassify material when he was president . But there is no record he did.
There is a process to declassify material and even the president has to consider national security concerns.
One material is declassified they belong in the public domain.
The documents recovered from Trumps residence still carry the classified stamp and was missing from the National Archives. Refusing to return them opens criminal intent and obstruction of Justice.
Why is Trump hanging on to classified documents and how he hoped to profit from it will be the subject of future investigations.
-->
@n8nrgim
First off, thank you for providing a primary source. That is amazing of you and I like that I can look something up that is the original source of the info rather than an opinion by a news agency or a lawyer or something of that nature.
So 18 U.S. Code § 798 says:
(a)Whoever knowingly and willfully communicates, furnishes, transmits, or otherwise makes available to an unauthorized person, or publishes, or uses in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States any classified information— [1]
This says nothing about the President's ability to declassify information. Nor does it talk about the President's ability to classify information. It is simply talking about information that is classified.
The current interpretation as per the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988 is that the President, by nature of his being the Commander in Chief, can declassify whatever he wants.
This law was passed in 1951, [1] the SCOTUS ruling was 1988. And, according to the Constitution, the current interpretation stands until a new one overturns it or a new Constitutional Amendment is written to clarify the President's abilities to classify and declassify information. At least as I understand the situation.
SOURCES:
-->
@oromagi
Quit appealing to authority and actually put forward evidence. If your news sources cited mostly primary sources I wouldn't have asked for primary sources now would I have?
It isn't difficult to find a court proceeding. Just use Google it takes 5 minutes. It also isnt difficult to find intelligence reports and the like.
In fact, I'll even help you out and give you the directory for the Federal Government: https://www.usa.gov/
That will have virtually every link you need to find whatever government documents you need to have evidence.
Until then, I am not dodging. The sources I have cited thus far have cited the law, links to the primary sources, and more.
From what I could tell, your sources did not do that.
If you want to prove things about Flynn, then a great place to start would be the intelligence reports and investigations claiming the things about him (the primary sources) or the publicly available court proceedings (which likely have all that stuff in them).
What did you learn in college? Did they not teach you about the difference between primary and secondary sources? Did they not explain to you that Wikipedia, academic commentaries, and other encyclopedias are tertiary sources and the news is considered a secondary source?
Is this not taught in College anymore?
Actually, come to think of it, I first learned that in my freshman year of high school.
-->
@ILikePie5
But I like DeSantis. Plus I want to see DeSantis wield the Gestapo. If anyone complains, we can blame the Orangeman like we blame Putin.
Americans won't know any better.
-->
@Greyparrot
-> @ILikePie5But I like DeSantis. Plus I want to see DeSantis wield the Gestapo. If anyone complains, we can blame the Orangeman like we blame Putin.Americans won't know any better.
DeSantis should drive Trump out of Florida Mar a Lago just to show he has power over Trump. The rest should be easy. DeSantis is better educated.
-->
@Shila
Heil DeSantis, mein fuher! I fully support giving the Orangeman the Trotsky treatment. Assuming your shitty America education mentioned that name somewhere.