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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   24828 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 6, 2024

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The DOJ’s clever wordsmithing, however, did not accurately describe the origin of the cover sheets. In what must be considered not only an act of doctoring evidence but willfully misleading the American people into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security, agents involved in the raid attached the cover sheets to at least seven files to stage the photo.

This is a tendentious presentation imo. Politico presents this as:

Smith’s team revealed in the filing that FBI agents carried printed “classified cover sheets” during the Aug. 8, 2022, search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate and used them to replace any classified documents they discovered in cardboard Bankers Boxes that littered the former president’s residence.

“The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose, until the FBI ran out because there were so many classified documents, at which point the team began using blank sheets with handwritten notes indicating the classification level of the document(s) seized,” the prosecutors wrote.

“Any handwritten sheets that currently remain in the boxes do not represent additional classified documents — they were just not removed when the classified cover sheets with the index code were added,” Smith’s team wrote. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet.”

I think it's reasonable to put cover sheets on the classified documents, given they are classified. The documents would have already had classification markings, so I don't see how this is "willfully misleading" the public "into believing the former president is a criminal and threat to national security".

It turns out that when the government alleged that Trump had classified documents he was not supposed to have, the government itself did not accurately know which documents Trump had, or which documents Trump was even supposed to have. Actually, worse than that, it turns out they fabricated some or all of the accusations

"Some or all", here, seems unjustified - I don't think anyone (other than perhaps Trump on Twitter) is claiming the accusations are all fake - that's a much stronger claim than "the documents aren't in the same order that they were when we scanned them". Your sources imply this is like "tampering" with evidence, and it may (not sure) be a procedural issue, but things like "adding cover sheets" and "reordering documents" don't undermine the claim that Trump committed a crime.

I think it's reasonable to put cover sheets on the classified documents, given they are classified.

the government didn't have to stage a photo to release to the public or put the photo in the public charging document

in a world where the prosecution is attempting to redact and black out anything and everything they don't carefully curate for an agenda and engage in repeated fights for failure to turn over discovery requiring attorneys to file FOIA requests to gov agencies, it is honestly laughable to try to imply that the government was just being reasonable when they put cover sheets on classified documents reading CLASSIFIED PAY ATTENTION TO ME CLASSIFIED HUMAN INTEL CLASSIFIED so they could take a picture and have it published to influence the media and public

don't undermine the claim that Trump committed a crime

yes, they do because a defense to at least some of the more serious charges is that Trump didn't know the specific documents were there and didn't handle or interact with the documents and therefore was not engaged in willful conduct with respect to the those documents which would be supported by the documents still being in the exact order at time of seizure which they were when NARA created the boxes and told Trump to come get them and when they returned the boxes they demanded Trump turn over

I agree that this would be really, really bad.

But I dont see any reason to believe its true beyond wanting to believe its true.

Julie Kelly does not justify her assertion.

are you referring to use the cover sheets for the photo?

sure she does, she uses the changing statements of Jay Bratt, knowledge of what cover sheets they brought with them, the uniform nature of their appearance in the photo attached with a paperclip, the rolling trickle truth of prosecutors being forced to admit at the very least they made misleading statements about various pieces of critical evidence in the case, and the fact that no classified cover sheets were logged as "recovered" in the container

you can claim the DOJ team has not explicitly written "yes, we placed these cover sheets saying 'up to human intel' on the documents and took a picture of them," but you cannot claim she doesn't justify her assertion

No one else in the media se3ms to think she has justified herself. Foxnews and OAN haven't jumped on this. It's wishcasting.

okay, so you knew she had justified her speculation, having read the linked article, and you still wrote a comment claiming she didn't

and now you're dropping that having not addressed any part of that support and are claiming because you haven't seen "others in the media" or foxnews/oan talk about it, it's without support? what? why would I or anyone care what foxnews or oan think or do about anything

this is just dishonest

okay, so you knew she had justified her speculation

No more so than Otis Eugene Ray. Rank speculation is not justification. Your definition may differ.

If you believe that this story is more than wishcasting you should ask yourself why real conservative media outlets aren't repeating it.

The use of the classified cover sheets in that photo does many things

  1. It provides a lot more visual impact than just classified documents with markings.

  2. It gives the impression that it would be obvious to anyone who casually looked in the box that it had classified documents. This is important because "knowingly" is an element of some of the charges.

  3. It effectively substitutes the FBI's CLAIM that the documents were classified for the actual evidence of classification.

  4. Since the classification markings on the pre-printed cover sheets didn't have to match those on the documents, it provided the impression that the documents had perhaps a higher classification level than they did. For instance, the NPR story claimed one of the cover sheets said "UP TO HCS-P/SI/TK", leading them to believe Trump had documents related to HUMINT. I thought at the time this was odd, you don't put "UP TO" on your caveats. But it makes perfect sense for a placeholder that might be used for a wide range of documents you might find. And given that, there might well have been no HUMINT at all; the placeholder is not evidence.

  5. Since the narrative accompanying the photo in court filings did not reveal that the cover sheets were added by the FBI, it constitutes an attempt to prejudice and/or mislead the court (as well as the public)

It provides a lot more visual impact than just classified documents with markings.

This is true, and probably isn't ideal, but it is not a huge issue. Maybe prosecutors shouldn't do things for 'visual impact', but they do, and at any rate the conduct of Trump and his lawyers at various legal proceedings has been 100x worse.

It gives the impression that it would be obvious to anyone who casually looked in the box that it had classified documents. This is important because "knowingly" is an element of some of the charges.

Pretty sure the documents themselves have clear classification markings on them?

It effectively substitutes the FBI's CLAIM that the documents were classified for the actual evidence of classification.

To the public, maybe? The claim is true, though, and it's not evidence to the courts, though. If those documents weren't actually classified when trump was President, Trump's lawyers would be all over that.

Since the classification markings on the pre-printed cover sheets didn't have to match those on the documents, it provided the impression that the documents had perhaps a higher classification level than they did.

Do you actually think this made a difference in anyone's reaction to this case? And, again, the courts are considering the actual documents and their classification levels. Here is an article going over the actual documents and their classification levels and contents. I do not think the cover pages were materially misleading given that.

Pretty sure the documents themselves have clear classification markings on them?

Even if this is the case -- and we in fact do not know that -- it would only be noticed by examining the document. Just casually looking in the open box would not make it obvious. There's a reason cover sheets are very noticable like that.

To the public, maybe?

And to the court, at the time.

The claim is true, though

How do you know? At this point you have only the FBI's say-so.

Do you actually think this made a difference in anyone's reaction to this case?

Yes, there was in fact a lot of screaming about "OMG nuclear secrets" and "OMG HUMINT, Trump's getting our spies killed!"

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