This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It is ironic that you compare Clinton and Trump whilst making it seem like what Trump did was on par or worse. It seems clear that what Hillary was trying to do was get around FOIA (ie oversight). Clinton was by far worse.
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.
No you intimated that what Trump did was worse than what he said he’d lock Hillary up for. Yet what Hillary did was worse so there need not be hypocrisy.
More options
Context Copy link
Every single president before Trump (except maybe Nixon) was allowed unlimited time to go through his documents and decide which ones to give to the archives. Obama probably still isn't done, if anyone cared to look -- hell if you looked in Bush's basement I wouldn't be surprised if you found some shit.
It's the furthest thing from cut & dried; the people breaking norms on this one are definitely not Trump.
I think the unprecedented part isn't that Trump took and kept documents but that he and his team explicitly lied to law enforcement/DoJ when politely asked to report and return classified documents.
The request itself was unprecedented; no other presidents were asked to do this.
The request occurred because the DoJ became aware of their existence. They are obligated to request their return once they become aware of their existence. At least in the past, what, 30 years, I'm not aware of a situation where they discover a former president has classified documents and don't request them to be immediately returned.
The idea that there's all this collusion against Trump feels odd. Many people working at the DoJ and FBI are Republicans and voted for Trump and will probably vote for Trump again. (Maybe some have changed their mind after starting to prosecute him.) They're not picking on him by going like "those documents you're not legally permitted to have? please report all the ones you're aware of and return them to us". They're not bullying the guy because they hate him. They're following the law and carrying out their duties. It's possible there's some political motivation in the New York case, but many of the people involved in the classified documents case likely aren't putting politics into the mix. It's a pretty straightforward case.
How did they 'become aware of their existence' though?
I'm sure there's the odd one, but considering the polling in D.C. and more direct evidence I suspect that the others are rather more... impactful.
This is not even a foregone conclusion -- again, he was the President -- he's legally permitted to do anything he wants with classified documents, and ones in his possession when he left office are quite some grey area, legally.
LOL -- glad you acknowledge the possibility.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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?
It means nothing to the President -- it's legally arguable that he's already excluded from existing regulations, even once his term is up.
You're aware that presidents normally continue to receive classified security briefings once their term is up? There's no need to handle the transfer of documents in a confrontational way, particularly so soon after leaving office -- it's just a fact that this is all completely unprecedented, and completely on the Biden admin.
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.
Here is a timeline if needed
Do unprecedented things, get unprecedented treatment. Especially if you leave a bunch of slam dunk evidence.
Not Congressmen, but with presidents it's not really leeway but rather that legally it's much closer to a l'etat c'est moi situation, and the norm is to not test this. Again, the request itself is unprecedented; see Biden. Despite his lack of Presidential privilege, nobody was knocking on his door asking for documents during Trump's term; nor should they have been.
More options
Context Copy link
Yeah as opposed to I don’t know doctoring emails sent to fisa courts or destroying evidence under subpoena. Who, whom.
How many times do I have to say I encourage them to pursue crime against Democrats?
And how many times does it need pointed out that due to the location of the federal government and the jury pool there is very little odds Dems will get convicted. See Elias.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And honestly seemed a bit like a set up (ie files were sent to him and then he was hassled about it).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Is it? You know that picture with all the classified cover sheets was essentially fabricated by the FBI -- they put those cover sheets there.
Is it supposed to be a defense that the classified documents he had didn't have coversheets?
More options
Context Copy link
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.
Then you are being naive. The FBI knew that photo would be on the front page of major news publications. By showing that it makes it appear like Trump was causally keeping things that say Top Secret around — he even had a FOLDER!
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.
You are assuming the goal was legal as opposed to political
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.
No one is saying Trump can do no wrong. They are pointing out the obvious disparate treatment and concluding that “obvious legal mistakes that hurt Trump politically” are more readily explainable by those mistakes being political calculations. We’ve seen the DOJ / FBI act very political vis-à-vis Trump. Therefore it isn’t conspiracy to assume that their conduct is political when it makes most sense for it to be political.
More options
Context Copy link
This is so easy to say when you know it will never come to pass.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
It probably would have worked if it wasn't for Judge Cannon.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Oh yes, they added a bunch of classified cover sheets to a photo, and put it in a court filing without mentioning that those cover sheets were added by them. Just your average everyday "oopsie" in the FBI.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The cover sheets were brought for a photo that could be shared without itself being a disclosure incident, the documents were staged for the photo, and the photo was presented publicly and presented in a way to insinuate that the cover sheets had been there from the start. (Which itself was furthered by a major media outlet coincidentally being at Mar-a-Lago for the dawn document raid to report it as it happened.)
The nature of Presidential classification authority is that there is nothing to check, hence why the classified document case got nuked by implications of the official acts immunity ruling by the Supreme Court during the parallel attempt at anti-Trump lawfare.
The Biden Administration's effort to target Trump in the classified document case rested on an argument that Presidents have to go through a formal process for declassification, insist that because Trump did follow the process the documents were still classified, and thus that once Trump left office with them he could no longer declassify them and thus it was improper holding.
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. This is why the charges were under the espionage act for having classified documents, and not for violation of a declassification process in improperly declassifying documents. The case has hinged from the start on the argument that Trump did not declassify them, as opposed to could not do so automatically as part and parcel of the job.
Which has been utterly unsurprising to anyone actually familiar with US classification regulations. The President does not need to justify the decision to declassify to other parts of the US government, does not need to communicate that decision to anyone else, and if the President determines something no longer needs to be classified then- as long as it doesn't derive from Atomic Energy Act- there is nothing and no one to say he can't. There are all inherent aspects of being the ultimate classification and declassification authority of Executive Branch documentation, an authority that the Biden administration has never taken the position that then-President Trump didn't have the authority to do.
This is why the case functionally broke when the Supreme Court made its ruling on immunity for official acts. The President's decision to declassify solely Executive branch information is an official act. It's not something regulated by Congress. It's not something beyond the scope of the Executive to establish limits on itself either in certain ways, but no such procedural requirement was ever alleged.
No allegations?! For the umpteeth time, There is literally a recording of him doing so! It's 2 minutes long, listen for yourself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Which creates the quandary of the prosecution claiming that non-President Trump's claim (which should be taken as objective and legal and not at all performative because we all know Trump would never exaggerate) overturns the inherent decisions of President Trump's declassification authority when President Trump decided what to take.
No, the difference is that Biden did not have the authority to declassify the documents, whereas Trump did. This is also a significant part of the distinction between Trump and Clinton, and Trump and Pence. Of the four cases, the only one pursued has been the one against the only figure with the actual declassification authority, who also happens to be the political opponent of the party pursuing the charges, despite the Espionage Act having no obligation to spare the former or pursue the later.
The choice to prosecute was just that- a choice. It was also a choice pursued in parallel with multiple other lawfare efforts intended to hobble the ruling party's primary political opponent.
Sure they are. They have to. Again, the classification cover sheets have no evidentiary power on their own, and so if photos are to be presented as evidence it will have to be photos of the actual confidential documents. If the photos are not going to be provided as evidence, there is no reason to take them.
Classified evidence not a new dilemma, and the US justice system has ways for showing limited classified information to a judge to validate a claim of secrets that won't be shown publicly.
No, the cover sheets are not immaterial- they are demonstrative of how the FBI attempted to shape public (and worse for them, court) perception by altering evidence they claimed to be presenting that characterized the alleged crime, and demonstrate the unnecessary but existent coordination between the Executive Branch and the partisan news agencies who received and publicized the photos that had no evidentiary purpose.
For the President? Heavens no. Nor has the prosecution, the current White House, past White Houses, Congressional Intelligence oversight committees, or lawyers identified a specific process that is required to be followed by the president before the President can treat a document as unclassified. Nor have you, for that matter.
The better question, then, is what procedure you think was violated by the President.
(And not, for example, a staff who failed to complete any supporting paperwork to note the decision after the fact.)
If you believe Trump has committed an open and shut case in not following a procedure applying to the president, you should at least be able to identify what procedure was violated, no?
(The answer to this is yes, by the way. If you reply without actually identifying the alleged procedure that specifically applies to the President, the response will merely be a question of if you've found that procedure yet.)
Prove it. Which procedure, specifically, did Trump need to have changed?
If this is as cut and dry as you think, this should be very easy for you. Instead, I suspect what you are going to do is fumble around a bit because the media reports that alleged a process violation never actually specify a Presidential process to be violated. You will find some articles on how declassification processes work for agencies, you will find notes that declassification is typically noted in memos after a decision has been made, but you will not find a standard that says that the President has to go through a process before his decision to declassify information becomes legal.
The more politically minded will note that this is a form of how partisans can lie without technically lying- they are only implying the existence of a thing (a specific procedural requirement), but never actually make the claim of what the thing actually is, which might discredit them if examined. Then they move forward on acting on the basis of the implied thing.
More contemporary historically minded people will remember that this was a routine part of anti-Trump media coverage and probes for years, including in the contemporary legal environment when Trump was being accused of fraud in which the victims testified on his behalf, an accusation which in turn was used to levy historic fines.
No, that's pretty much exactly how it works. That's what ultimate declassification authority entails and enables.
The archetypical example of ultimate declassification authority is that if a President decides in the middle of an a phone call with a foreign leader to reveal information, there is no legal issue even though the same could send other government employees to jail. The authority to do so does not come from the context, but from the position, and requires no more pre-work than the act. The action is not legalized retroactively, it was legal in and of itself.
Which, in turn, goes back to why the reporting on Presidential declassification that you will focus on are ex post facto recordings of the declassification, rather than pre-requirements. Classified information really can be declassified simply by an original classification authority deciding in the midst of a conversation that they really want to use a piece of information. The declassification does not get retroactively re-classified if they don't do paperwork, and that paperwork is in turn is owed to... the President, as the Chief of Executive. Not by the Executive, to someone else.
I laughed, but no.
In short, setting aside the various precedents that limit the Espionage Act to its historic limited utilizations, the Executive Branch has systems for designated information that it believes warrant information controls. Information that is not bound by information controls, categorically cannot be mishandled, because handling standards are established by the Executive Branch under the authority of the President.
The President, in turn, has ultimate authority over all Executive Branch information security programs. There is no one in the executive branch who can impose information control restrictions on the President, or who can reverse his decisions. If the President judges that something is unclassified and without restrictions, it is, unless the restriction is legislated by Congress.
Note, in turn, that the indictment and prosecutors have not actually cited a law under which the information could not be declassified.
Thank you for repeating the previously supplied summary of the prosecution's position.
However, the prosecution's failure to demonstrate a process failure still stands-
...which returns to assuming the conclusion as the basis of this prosecution.
Rather than proving the President Trump did not declassify the documents, which could be done by identifying a required process for the President to declassify, the prosecution is instead claiming the documents are still classified and demanding Trump prove otherwise, when the basis of proving otherwise would be a process that is not required to declassify and could be used in the stronger first form if such a requirement existed.
In shorter terms, rather than prove that Trump did not follow a required process to declassify information, the prosecution is asserting an inverse- that Trump must prove he declassified information by following a process that is not required.
The issue of demanding the target prove their innocence by compliance to a standard that does not exist should be obvious to those not partisan inclined.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link