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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.
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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.
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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.
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And honestly seemed a bit like a set up (ie files were sent to him and then he was hassled about it).
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