Tiber727
18d ago
Yes, the Executive Order applies to the document itself, and to the agencies following that.
The documents were at some point classified. Do we agree at that point? Therefore something has to change to make them not classified. The President has 2 special powers:
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The power to share classified material without punishment, which does not make it declassified.
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The power to declassify without following the process.
I think we agree on both of these points. Do we not?
My argument from there is that, there is no process the President must follow to declassify. He can do almost literally anything to declassify it, but there is one thing that does not fall under "literally anything," and that is nothing. Nothing meaning "Not Thing," as in he did not do the thing. Therefore, they retain their existing status of classified. "Thinking about it" is also nothing, because it is still classified as far as the entire rest of the government knows. Even something as simple as letting anyone who could communicate the decision know would probably work.
I will repeat my earlier questions:
If these documents were not classified at all, then why didn't Trump at any point between May 2021 and August 2022 say that he had no intentions of returning the documents because he doesn't have to? And why did he say in fall 2021 that he didn't declassify them?
Tiber727
18d ago
My point of contention is I don't think we are in "Tiber's rules unfairly" as much as you do. I think you attribute the "unfairly" to a subjective difference of how much you think Democrats should be punished vs reality, but your subjective measure doesn't need to be defined or tied to the actual amount of crime that has occurred. Therefore no matter how much N changes, "Tiber's rules fairly" will always be N + 1.
I think we are in "Barron's rules unfairly." Quite frankly, I still don't even know what your rules fairly even are. Is it:
A. Political figures are never prosecuted because they never commit crimes? That's not reality.
B. Political figures can never be prosecuted? That would by definition be impartial, but pretty awful? But you made a comment saying Menendez should have been prosecuted sooner, which doesn't fit with that?
C. Political figures can only be prosecuted by their own side? You don't seem to count Democrats punishing Democrats as that.
I think that, given that vagueness, "Democrats sometimes punish their own, Republicans protect their own" is Barron's rules unfairly.
Tiber727
18d ago
Your examples do absolutely nothing to disprove a one-sided lawfare hypothesis so why should I grant you that point?
The only evidence of your hypothesis to begin with is motivated reasoning that people don't like Trump, ergo they don't actually believe Trump committed crimes. I cannot prove what is in people's heads and neither can you, therefore you can insist forever. I can point out all the evidence forever, even things I believe are solid evidence. All I get in return is some other situation that's vaguely similar against a Democrat but didn't result in the outcome you say you don't want to begin with (but act like you do in fact want it), and how by my own rules I should support said hypothetical outcome. I say I'm absolutely fine with that and you effectively call me a liar, which again you can insist forever.
You then challenge me to find a counterexample, and when I do you simply add another condition to it until I can't. Now I have a find a Democrat convicted by Democrats and said conviction must have cost Democrats a seat. Of course you know these conditions are rare to begin with. I can either spend an hour finding some example from the 1800's, which you will say is too old to count, or if I manage to find a recent example I'll get told something like how it didn't count because Democrats still had a majority or some such. I have to present hard evidence and all you have to do is find a way to spin it that of course it was all a ploy by the Democrats. Of course nothing similar will ever be expected from Republicans.
This is an extremely motivated reading of that phone call, especially with more recent revelations on the election in Georgia. Gotta be honest, it’s making me doubt your commitment to even-handed lawfare.
So now you're the one complaining about motivated reasoning? Yes, I'm sure Trump only cares about election security. That's why he specifically hones in on a district that could be make-or-break in making him the winner. And spends an hour rambling with no specific allegations. And is clear that the outcome he wants is not to find fraudulent or miscounted votes, but to continue to do so until enough votes are found to declare him the winner. He insists that that this is possible with no information about how those votes were falsified, he spends pretty much the entire time talking in a "just find a way" tone.
Prosecuting your political opponents? You’re right! The political valence is even the same!
Or trying to simply ignore election results and declare yourself the winner. One of the two.
Tiber727
18d ago
Your own link doesn't claim it was an argument, but Trump supporting his recounting of events of someone not present to someone else not present... and this in turn goes back to automatic declassification authority powers for when he took documents away.
They weren't arguing with each other, but he showed it to another person in order to back up his claim. Perhaps I should have used better words such as "underscore his argument." It is still him almost word-for-word saying "Don't tell anyone, but I am showing you this document that I could have declassified as President." Which would make no sense to say unless you know you didn't declassify something.
Moreover, and in contradiction to the prosecutions' own thesis, the clip is raised for Trump saying that the document is classified... but the later argument (and your concluding argument) is that Trump is no longer President, and thus does not have classification authority to make- or reverse- a decision already made. However, the decision to take the documents was a decision as a President, as would have been the accompanying declassification authority implications.
Speaking of misusing words there is no contradiction here. The argument is that Trump is showing a classified document because he never took any action to declassify it, and he knows that. He had that power when he was in office, but it's too late for him to use it. President Trump could have ordered a drone strike. Ex-President Trump cannot. Likewise, President Trump could have shared classified information but ex-President Trump cannot.
Your argument is that taking documents home when leaving office is declassifying documents because he doesn't have to tell anybody to declassify something. That argument makes no sense because the government is not a hive mind. Him thinking about it does not psychically transmit that information to anyone else. By that logic if a low-level federal contractor had taken copies of those documents home at the same time and revealed any of them, he would not be guilty because Trump declassified them, even though he had literally no way of knowing that.
In addition, Trump's actions make no sense within this context. Here's a timeline. Trump was told to return documents in May 2021. Prior recording is from fall 2021. Trump hands over 15 boxes Jan 2022. Investigation begins March 2022. In May 2022 Trump is subpoena'd. Trump reportedly tries to suggest telling them he's doesn't have any more classified documents. Nauta is accused of moving boxes around. In June 2022 they collect more documents. On August 2022 they raid and find more documents.
Under your proposed explanation, where in this 1.5 year process does Trump refuse to give anything back and argue he doesn't have to give back documents that aren't classified in the first place?
Prove it. Which procedure, specifically, did Trump need to have changed?
Obama's executive order remained in effect because executive orders are not automatically null when a President leaves, and President Trump did not null them. The argument is this.
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The information was classified.
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There are conditions necessary to declassify information, and none of them were fulfilled.
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Trump did not waive any of those conditions.
In other words, it was a violation because what Trump did is not described in here, and President Trump did not null the order itself or declare this information any exception to it.
The closest is this:
Sec. 1.6. Identification and Markings. (a) At the time of original classification, the following shall be indicated in a manner that is immediately apparent:
(4) declassification instructions, which shall indicate one of the following:
(A) the date or event for declassification, as prescribed in section 1.5(a);
(B) the date that is 10 years from the date of original classification, as prescribed in section 1.5(b);
(C) the date that is up to 25 years from the date of original classification, as prescribed in section 1.5(b); or [...]
(h) Prior to public release, all declassified records shall be appropriately marked to reflect their declassification.
President Trump can share information, but that doesn't declassify it. That just makes a single person privy to confidential information without being punished for it (though if they share that information they may be punished for it). President Trump could have ordered the information to be declassified, but him supposedly thinking about it does not do that. He can skip the process, but he has to actually say he's skipping the process. He cannot claim as a former President that he thought about it doing it in 2020 and that is the same as doing so, any more than he can pardon someone today by claiming he was thinking about it before he left office.
Tiber727
18d ago
I just posted examples of it happening and you pivot to finding a reason to say it doesn't count. Hell, they even pushed out Al Franken, who was at the time fairly popular, over mere accusations of inappropriate behavior.
Yes, there aren't a lot of examples because most politicians are at least smart enough to be corrupt in legal ways (see Pelosi). I don't think prosecuting someone for taking classified documents home, showing them to others, and hiding them from officials when they try to find them is novel. If anyone besides Trump did it, this wouldn't even be a discussion.
Prosecuting someone for trying to replace election officials with loyalists who will call the election for you or calling state officials to pull votes for you out of thin air has never happened in America because no one has tried it, but it's the same sort of thing that regularly happens in third world countries. Hell it's happening in Venezuela right now. For all the people claiming the election is insecure, prosecuting that sort of behavior would also be a slam dunk against anyone but Trump.
And again, under your proposed rules, how could it possibly ever happen?
Tiber727
19d ago
Bob Menendez will be replaced by another guy with a D next to his name so absolutely nothing was lost by the democrats. The occasional no-stakes sacrifice isn’t fooling anyone, especially when it took two decades for consequences.
Oh come now. You ignore the point and pivot to calling it meaningless. The "lawfare" argument is that Menendez should never face consequences, because if Republicans bring charges it's lawfare and if Democrats do it it's a stunt I guess? Do we need to summon a being of true neutrality and law to bring prosecution or not?
They wanted lawfare. Your rules applied fairly and all that.
They were doing this before Trump was ever even in office. And again, I don't have near as much a problem with it as you seem to. The whole "Oops I deleted it!" was at a bare minimum shady as fuck.
Tiber727
19d ago
The later. That's what actually happened, after all, and is consistent with years of prior leaks from the FBI and associated probes pursued for political harm, whereas there is no allegation that Donald Trump used those classified documents to try and win arguments.
No allegations?! For the umpteeth time, There is literally a recording of him doing so! It's 2 minutes long, listen for yourself.
Stacks of boxes in odd places is pretty normal. It was a minor- and not prosecuted- reoccurance of both former VP Pence and former VP Biden that they both were found to have boxes of classified documents in their domiciles well after their departures. In Biden's case, they were found being kept in a garage.
Yes, and when the government told Biden to return the documents, he did. Trump is an outlier in that he allegedly attempted to hide documents to prevent them from being returned, That's the difference here.
Further, there was no practical reason to put classified cover sheets over the documents in question for the purpose of an evidentiary photo. The cover sheet has no evidentiary power in and of itself- it could be any document behind it, so you'd need to take photos sans cover sheet anyways, and if you're doing that you'd need to have a camera and photo-storage planned for the relevant classified level anyway.
They aren't going to show the actual confidential documents of course. But as you stated the cover sheet doesn't make them confidential. The contents of the documents will not be revealed to the public, but the case is immediately dead if Trump's lawyers prove the documents are not confidential. So yes, the cover sheet snafu is immaterial.
However, there is no required procedure, the current White House does not assert it has created a required procedure, and neither the National Archives or FBI ever actually identified a required process that Trump failed to follow to lead to the judgement of 'improper' holding.
You think the government doesn't have procedures for declassifying? Trump could have changed the procedures, but he didn't do so. You are correct that Trump doesn't need to explain why he is declassifying something, but incorrect that a document is declassified simply by thinking about it. According to this article, it doesn't even matter. The Espionage Act criminalizes mishandling information "relating to the national defense" not "classified information." Meaning that theoretically you can be guilty of sharing information that was never even classified.
This is why the case functionally broke when the Supreme Court made its ruling on immunity for official acts.
False. An ex-President is not a President, and the actions of a former President are by definition not official acts. The case was dismissed because Cannon bizarrely claimed that Special Counsels have no authority to prosecute, which is currently being appealed.
Tiber727
19d ago
In other words, I cannot argue in favor of a thing unless I personally have the means to implement it? Sorry, that's not a demand I'm going to comply with.
"No lawfare" is just corruption, because every public figure is partisan. Was Bob Menendez (D-NJ) a victim of lawfare when he was convicted of 16 counts of bribery? He has a D next to his name! George Santos? Michael Flynn? "Lawfare" absent any hard evidence of the motives of the prosecutors is little more than the idea that anyone you like can't be accused of a crime.
I'd also argue the right does know what lawfare is. What do you think all those people chanting "Lock her up!" were calling for?
Tiber727
19d ago
Corrections never end up on the front page of anything. The government does not control the NYT.
The idea - that the Justice Department spends probably millions of dollars arranging a raid of Mar-a-Lago and building a case that they know they will lose just so that they can add a cover sheet saying "confidential," which will end up on the front page of NYT for a day before being debunked (which they also know won't matter) - is actually extremely conspiratorial. I would argue if they're smart enough to do this and also set Trump up to be recorded showing documents to a civilian and say that those documents are confidential (This part seems to be getting ignored a lot) then they could have planted better evidence than cover sheets.
Tiber727
19d ago
Sure, but what do you want me to do about it? Change my career path, go into a law, get a job in politics, and rise through the ranks so I can become a star prosecutor who goes after Republicans and Democrats alike?
Tiber727
19d ago
How many times do I have to say I encourage them to pursue crime against Democrats?
Tiber727
19d ago
A) the disparate treatment is all feels. Here's a list of government misconduct, and I'm seeing lots of Ds. And I haven't personally witnessed Democrats attempt to protect other Democrats accused to crime.
B) The government is not all Democrats. Republicans had effective control of the federal government from 2016-2020. They also have the power to go after Democrats. You might say, "Well, Republicans are nicer and wouldn't do that!" I don't buy that. Trump literally campaigned on going after Hillary. If he didn't do that that sounds like he squandered a prime opportunity and you should judge him and other Republicans for that accordingly.
C) "The legal system pays disproportionate attention to criminals as opposed to non-criminals" also explains the phenomenon you are seeing, and is literally how the justice system is supposed to work. Doubly true if the criminals leave obvious evidence.
D) The "obvious" part of your "obvious legal mistakes" is evidence against it being a political gesture. If you make an argument that turns out to be false, it hurts your credibility, both legally and publicly. Therefore, it makes sense to at least be clever in telling lies, especially since the legal system is designed to be adversarial and thus sniff out falsehoods.
E) Let's say you are given the task to scan thousands of pages of documents, and put them back exactly as they were. How do you do that? If it were me, I would have some sort of separator to remind me where everything was. Like a cover sheet. And since the contents are believed to be confidential, I would put "confidential" on those separators. Then due to some mistake or miscommunication between multiple people, they either don't get removed at the end or aren't disclosed when meant to be disclosed.
Tiber727
19d ago
You are assuming the goal was political as opposed to legal.
I don't pretend that Democrats would never do anything underhanded. But I think Republicans are getting to the point of treating everything that happens to a Republican as a conspiracy. Sorry, I don't buy that Trump can do no wrong, and must be immune to any consequences of his actions else the world is out to get him. And often by the same people who claim that Democrats in cities let repeat offenders walk.
A lot of the evidence in this case is public, including Trump literally confessing to showing classified documents to someone who has no clearance. So yes I think he is guilty, and guilty in a way that is easily provable in court, outside of a judge who tosses a case for completely unprecedented reasons. If all of this is made up, we'll soon see.
If they are only prosecuting a guilty person because he's the wrong guilty person, well I say it's a good start. If Republicans want to engage in "lawfare" against Democrats by punishing them for things they are guilty of, great! Either government gets cleaned up, or laws that aren't being enforced get removed. Sounds like a positive to me.
Tiber727
19d ago
And now that it was found out, which guess what, Trump has lawyers whose entire career is catching things like this, they have egg on their face. If it was a scheme, it was an absolutely dumb one. They're still attempting to go ahead with the case even though there's no way it will be concluded before the election.
Tiber727
19d ago
Congressmen and Presidents get a massive amount of leeway, which is that them still having classified documents is considered a mistake and they're told to give them back. That in fact happened to Trump, and he claimed he was cooperating. This isn't about any information he received after leaving office, or about him simply having documents. This is about him saying he's returned documents and then they come back to Mar-a-Lago and find more that were obviously moved from the last time they searched, meaning they believe he was actively trying to obstruct them. Also he showed classified documents to civilians and admitted on recording that he knew they were classified documents.
Do unprecedented things, get unprecedented treatment. Especially if you leave a bunch of slam dunk evidence.
Tiber727
20d ago
Assuming I believed you, then it sounds to me like the proper thing to do is decriminalize keeping confidential documents if it is apparently no big deal. Hell at that point why even have confidential designation if it apparently means nothing?
Tiber727
20d ago
I generally believe incompetence over maliciousness.
What's more likely?
An impulsive braggart with a tendency to think he can do anything grabbed some docs as personal trophies or to win arguments?
Or...
Trump normally keeps stacked up boxes of documents in bathrooms and the FBI throws in cover sheets to make Trump look guilty? And the judge is going to accept they they are classified based on this cover sheet and not check? Oh, and also they trick Trump into saying these exact words?
"Well, with Milley -- uh, let me see that, I'll show you an example," Trump says on the recording. "He said that I wanted to attack Iran. Isn't that amazing? I have a big pile of papers, this thing just came up. Look. This was him. They presented me this -- this is off the record, but -- they presented me this. This was him. This was the Defense Department and him. We looked at some -- this was him. This wasn't done by me, this was him. All sorts of stuff -- pages long, look."
"Wait a minute, let's see here. I just found, isn't that amazing?" Trump says. "This totally wins my case, you know. Except it is like, highly confidential. Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this. This was done by the military and given to me. As president I could have declassified, but now I can't."
Tiber727
20d ago
They had to categorize dozens of boxes of papers, and made a dumb mistake. We still have Trump admitting on recording that he was showing documents to a guest that he didn't declassify.
Tiber727
20d ago
Because I have no interest in defending Hillary. She could be prosecuted for it and I wouldn't shed a tear. I voted Bernie until I was largely forced to hold my nose and vote Hillary. In either case, her guilt or innocence has nothing to do with Trump's. And Trump's guilt when it comes to classified documents is so cut and dried the only thing anyone can do is whatabout Hillary or cast aspersions on the motive on anyone who would hold him accountable.
Tiber727
20d ago
To you and @Cirrus
Is there? Here's the way I see it. I know the elite are screwing me over. I don't like it, but I try to find the one who might do some good in some way that doesn't conflict with their own power. Trump comes along and says "We are absolutely screwing you over and I'm going to keep doing it!" And then he gathers a bunch of people who cheer as he screws them over. The honesty is something, but at the end of the day he's still doing it and actively gloating about it! Why would I be anything but repulsed by that?
Different forms of corruption are easier or harder to get rid of. Trump is to me the guy who snorts coke right in front of the cop and then the cop says that why should I arrest him when other people manage to get away with it? Okay, they probably shouldn't get away with it, but come on, he's right there!
Tiber727
20d ago
Democrat here.
I actually mostly agree with you that Trump would spend the majority of the time doing nothing and passing whatever Republicans put in front of him. From a D perspective that's bad of course, but not unexpected. Though expected or not, his court nominations have had lasting consequences. I think a lot of it is his propensity for impulsive or poor decisions, such as trying to pull out of NATO.
I think a lot of it is his norm-shattering ability to be a complete and utter hypocrite and/or corrupt and for it to be excused. He's a "Christian" that cheats on his wife and no one cares. He calls for locking up Hillary over emails, then has a bathroom full of classified documents and no one cares. Hunter must be punished over corruptly using family connections, but Trump businesses getting a bunch of business and business deals in other countries is a nothingburger. Let's also not forget Jared Kushner.
I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.
I think his false elector scheme was a massive attempt at overturning democracy. I don't know how he could do it again since a two-term limit doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room. But I also don't want to give power to the kind of person who seems to love trying to see how he can lawyer his way out of anything, especially when Republicans seem to go out of their way to excuse him.
Tiber727
21d ago
I'm hardly an economics professor myself, but I do know some things. Inflation happens because demand is higher than supply.
For examples of good inflation, if the economy is doing well, people have money to spare. They literally don't value $1 as much because they have so many of them, and businesses are able to get away with higher prices. Another example: when you hire a person, you are hiring a person to make them not do anything else. In other words, if in a given population everyone has the necessary education to go into astrophysics, if you want someone to flip burgers for you, you have to pay them a salary high enough that they don't go into astrophysics instead.
The bad reasons for inflation are obvious: Supply drops to lower than demand.
Deflation happens when supply is high but demand is low. Supply being high is good, but if demand is low for a long period of time that generally means something is wrong. Either you predicted demand poorly or customers turned frugal.
As unintuitive as it may seem, I think you generally always want inflation, but inflation for the good reasons. That should be slow enough that a loaf of bread costing a million dollars would happen, but maybe 10,000 years in the future. You've lived your entire life to where a penny is not really even worth the time it takes to pick up, but it wasn't that way from the beginning. Inflation is bad when your income doesn't keep up with it.
If a loaf of bread ever got to the point where it was a million bucks and you wanted to stop it, the only relatively reasonable way to do that would be a currency exchange. You print some nuBucks, force the economy to use nuBucks after 2 years, but they can trade $1,000 old dollars for 1 nuBuck. That's still a major hassle that most would want to avoid.
Tiber727
21d ago
Fair. My fault for not checking. But to but you and @KMC , the original comment did say to actively reduce prices. If this quick source is correct the last time we had deflation was 1954. And generally speaking, deflation means the economy is in a very bad condition.
Because he doesn't have to follow a process. He just has to actually do it. There is no such thing as a Presidential power that is exercised only by thinking about it.
Feel free to come back with an explanation for why Trump tried to hide the documents for a year and a half when he apparently had nothing to hide at all.
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