Trump Charged With 37 counts of Espionage, Obstruction and related crimes

[RoseMorninStar]

But is it having the documents (which isn't good) or the willful retention of them what is at issue? I am presuming Biden did not refuse to hand them over after multiple requests & subpoenas. I also cannot help wondering if there needs to be considerable methods & procedure protocol updates at the White House on the handling of documents.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

To do a proper investigation and determine what the usual practice for past presidents and vice presidents is, Special Counsels Smith and Hur probably should also examine all the files taken to post-administration offices and residences of Mike Pence, Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Al Gore, Bill Clinton, Dan Quayle, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, Nelson Rockefeller, and Gerald Ford.

I'm completely serious: we need to know what the baseline is in order to determine whether Biden's and Trump's document practices are unusual.

I agree.

[River]

Yeah, I'm getting the impression that stuff just gets shoved in boxes in the days approaching the end of a Presidential term. I'd also like someone, anyone, to look into how it is that NARA and other agencies were caught off-guard by the Biden discoveries. The Trump affair happened because they knew there were missing documents and knew Trump was holding out on then. This thing with Biden...seems like absolutely everyone involved was caught by surprise. I wonder how often classified material just isn't in any catalog at all...

But is it having the documents (which isn't good) or the willful retention of them what is at issue?

Both. Having the documents is bad. Refusing to give them back is even worse.

[N.E. Brigand]

I will say that today's move does make it harder on Merrick Garland's defenders. As Elie Honig writes:

Garland fans: Merrick Garland moves slowly and while liberals might not like it, it's the appropriate legal response.

Fox News: Biden did something wrong.

Merrick Garland: GO GO GO GO. GET THAT SPECIAL COUNSEL APPOINTED NOW!

I think it might have been Marcy Wheeler, who has defended Garland's approach, who noted today that it took more than 500 days after Trump was first believed to have kept classified documents for a special counsel to be appointed -- in fact, the Dept. of Justice spent much of that time negotiating with Trump trying to get him to return them* -- as opposed to the fewer than 80 days it took to appoint a special counsel after Biden was first believed to have kept classified documents.

*If Trump had turned them over as late as 14 months after it was first found that documents were missing, this whole thing might have blown over. Even after that, the FBI search might have been kept quiet if not for one lucky local reporter being on the scene. And even after that story broke, there still might not be a special counsel looking into Trump's document handling if Trump himself hadn't continued to fight to get the documents back.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The difference is that Biden is currently president and is the president that nominated Garland. Trump is neither of those things.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I was going to post about what I thought the impacts of the Biden situation might be on a potential Trump criminal case, but this thread does so much more knowledgably and intelligently than I could do, so I am just going to post it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The one thing that I'll add is that I thought that Biden's comment about the garage where the second batch of documents were found was safe because it was locked with his corvette was one of the most tone-deaf things I've heard a politician say. And that is saying something.

[N.E. Brigand]

I appreciate the reminder in the Secrets and Laws thread to which Voronwë links that prosecutors were already going to face a challenge indicting Donald Trump on Espionage Act issues because the most damning documents are also likely the ones they won't want to have made public in court proceedings.

That said, as V knows, the independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, who mostly specializes in national security issues, submitted a motion in another case, that of Joshua Schulte, a former CIA employee who was convicted last year of various espionage crimes for having given highly sensitive materials to Wikileaks in 2016. (He faces further charges on other matters.) Wheeler asked for the unsealing of the argument that Dept. of Justice had made in a hearing before the trial started, because from other information about the proceedings, it appears that the DOJ may have argued that if, for example, the New York Times publishes classified information, and then I share the Times article with you, both the Times and I have violated the Espionage Act. The government has responded to Wheeler's filing by saying her questions are merely academic. The judge has not yet ruled as to whether the government's earlier argument will be made public.

Although not referencing Wheeler's inquiry, Trevor Timm touches on some of the same issues in a new piece in the Guardian: "Joe Biden may have broken the Espionage Act. It’s so broad that you may have, too."

That’s because the Espionage Act is incredibly broad and spares no one. As I’ve explained before, even using the Espionage Act to go after Trump should not be cheered on by Democrats. Instead of actual spies, the hundred year-old law is usually abused to prosecute whistleblowers and threaten journalists. But it’s actually so broad that if you are a longtime reader of the Guardian, you’ve probably technically broken the law too!

Meanwhile, one commentator notes that former Vice President Mike Pence, in the course of saying that he would never mishandle classified documents, doesn't entirely rule out the possibility that he could have mishandled classified documents. As this person echoes my call yesterday for a much broader examination into others who probably made similar mistakes, a question is posed: "I wonder whether we'll ever hear about them and classified US materials, or whether off in the distance the roar of paper shredders is heard?"

Finally Josh Marshall offers a few thoughts about how the fact that so many top law enforcement officials (including the new special counsel) are Republicans, whether appointed by Republican or Democratic administrations, "contributes to Republicans having a strong bench of leading legal stars and Democrats lacking one. It cedes the terms of the public debate over law and order and national security to Republicans and like-minded professionals."

[N.E. Brigand]

CNN has a story about "Biden's whirlwind final days as vice president" that is obviously meant to paint an innocuous picture of how classified files could have ended up among Bidens personal materials and also, I would guess, is probably true.

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On the other hand, while running an errand this evening, I heard the NPR program described here -- the "Daily" from the New York Times -- in which Times reporter Glenn Thrush seemed to be playing up the worst possible outcomes for Biden.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[N.E. Brigand]

The Microsoft home page has a red banner across the top trumpeting as "Breaking News" the fact that the White House Counsel says that no visitor logs are kept at President Biden's Wilmington home, where some classified documents are held.

Yes, this is a valid subject for reporting. And I believe there has been previous references in other reporting to the existence or non-existence of visitor logs in Donald Trump's various residences. I cannot recall Microsoft using the red "breaking news" banner for those stories.

(The piece does at least note that it's normal for U.S. presidents not to maintain visitor logs at their homes, and also that the president's lawyer mentioned that Biden "restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.")

[N.E. Brigand]

Not sure if Rudy Giuliani is playing some game here but:

"Giuliani says Trump told him to take classified files home."

Giuliani says that despite Trump's suggestion, he never removed those files from Mar-a-Lago.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Wow!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[River]

I take it he ignored his counsel's advice to STFU.

[RoseMorninStar]

SO... he's back on Twitter. Doesn't that violate some agreement he had with his own social media platform? What is it with these narcissists?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Those are Trump's Truth Social posts quoted by Kyle Cheney on Twitter. So far as I know, Trump is not posting on Twitter.

[RoseMorninStar]

Ah. Ooops. I'm not a 'twitterer' - I missed that.

[Frelga]

Socks?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Socks?

This is what he was referring to:

Team Trump takes an interest in the ‘Clinton sock drawer case’