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Notes -
“Have you stopped beating your wife?”
I’d say the Stormy Daniels prosecution is probably unjust in that it wouldn’t be happening but for Trump’s political status. Low confidence.
The classified documents, on the other hand? Nothing I’ve seen suggests that Trump was innocent, or that a random citizen could get away with doing the same thing. While I was surprised that it escalated to a trial, I don’t think it’s unjust.
My understanding is that a low level government worker who did what Trump did with classified documents would go to jail, but an important politician (e.g. Hillary, Joe Biden, Sandy Berger) likely wouldn't.
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Those people don't handle classified documents on the regular.
How about a random politician?
True. I was thinking of Thug Shaker Central guy: low level military.
A better natural comparison is Biden, who had 25-30 documents around his house and office. The report on him concluded with a Hillary-worthy lack of “why, how or whom.” Why didn’t Trump get that benefit of the doubt?
I’d say 2-5 could count as lawfare, but most people using that term mean something more like 4 or 5.
1 is almost certainly true. Look how much the warrant focuses on specific people. They were definitely more confident in who was actually handling the boxes and giving the orders.
Same for 2. I have to stress—NARA did have reason to believe Trump was holding out on them. Biden’s team bent over backwards to avoid that.
3 is implausible; it’s not like there’s a lack of other cases to use. Including actual RICO charges.
4 and 5 are more credible. I’d be very surprised if people on these teams didn’t dislike the man or even think he’s a danger to the country. Enough to fabricate their entire job (e.g. planting classified docs)? Probably not. Enough to push when they wouldn’t for anyone else? Much more likely.
In short, I think there are a lot of reasons. The ones which I find most likely are the least “lawfare” of the bunch.
I think that's a fairly good summary of why this is a scissor statement.
Ultimately, one's view of the situation is dependent on how much respect they have for the institutions in question. And the object level facts of whether this was or wasn't technically illegal don't matter except to us nerds.
They may not even really be what decides this case, ultimately.
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Probably not a random person, but every other President in history -- which does seem a bit unfair?
Every other President post Nixon, you mean. Since the Presidential Records Act was passed specifically to keep him from holding on to stuff.
The best comparison is probably Biden or Pence. In both cases, they got ahead of the search warrants and basically bent over for NARA. No valet testimonies or partial handovers. I think that has a lot to do with it.
Reagan is another possibility. Apparently he was allowed to keep diaries, but I can’t find the relevant part in the Hur report.
Biden’s violations include papers from when he was a senator. Those papers were ones he was only supposed to have viewed in a clean room. Biden absolutely broke the law. But because his DOJ was in charge he “cooperated” with himself.
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Biden and Pence were not President -- every other President has been allowed to go through his papers at his leisure and select what to return and when. Obama probably still has stuff. It seems like a fairly civilized policy.
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No random person could be in Trump's position vis-a-vis the classified documents, so "every other President in history" is really one of the few reasonable comparisons.
That is, no one who wasn't in high political office could actually receive classified documents in the way that Trump is alleged to.
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What about the fraud case? Or the Rico case?
And have you read some of the unredacted statements coming up in the Florida case? It suggests some degree of set up (and typical Trump stupidity)
Which one is the fraud case? Hard to search.
Yes, I’ve been keeping up with the unredactions. Mostly to argue with people in the other subthread. I swear, when I started reading I didn’t look like such a partisan hack!
A few of the claims are very defensible. Then they’re used to argue something much more elaborate (and, of course, more favorable to Trump). Nothing about the document reordering changes the facts of the warrant or the charges. Translating “we acknowledge inconsistency with what we previously understood and represented to the Court” as “we are lying liars who got caught” is disingenuous.
That conclusion is propped up by thinner evidence. There’s a paragraph suggesting NARA gave Trump boxes at one point? That must mean they were the classified documents; it’s all a setup! News outlets ran with a misleading FBI photo? Psyop! Any time Politico or CNN says something uncharitable? Proof of the deep-seated conspiracy. Except when the judge postpones; clearly she’s the only rational, unbiased individual in this whole mess.
The biggest outlier is the claim about early DoJ/NARA collaboration, which is most likely to prove a political but-for. It’s also getting far less attention from Trump partisans. Is that because they aren’t sure about the timeline? Because they understand the difference between correlation and causation? Because they already assume the political motive is the only way? I don’t know. That’s the issue I’ll be following most closely.
Fraud is where he was hit with a 350m penalty for making allegedly fraudulent statements to the bank for a loan on which he paid every cent on the loan (which doesn’t mean there wasn’t fraud but disgorgement at best would be much smaller)
Oh, another NY case. Is this the one where he was inflating penthouse sizes?
I don’t know anything about fraud judgments, but I’m willing to believe the judge based that penalty on Trump’s politics.
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