I commented at some length to Paul's earlier post in this matter, and I won't repeat that here, except to note that I suspect the prosecution might be a bit over its skis when it claims Trump gave classified material to others, and just summarized for others what was in the documents. If it's a summary, I think that's very material, as I discuss there. Also, it's interesting the indictment does not, if memory serves, allege a violation of or even mention the Presidential Records Act, which will no doubt be part of the Trump defense. As for the point that Hillary didn't intentionally share highly classified material, she really did. All of her emails as Sec. of State were on her private server, and the government said her emails had been hacked. From what I was told at a legal seminar, emails are so insecure government interception of them without warrant is not an unreasonable seizure. Jim Dueholm
Comey said there was a decent chance Hillary’s emails were hacked. Now, I believe she should have been indicted for having them, but I’m not sure we move past that on a “maybe they were hacked.”
Of course I am open to the premise that the FBI knows for certain they are hacked and are covering it up.
Perfectly put. More than anything else your position means that if nominated, law abiding citizens cannot support Trump as somehow the lesser of two evils. In 16 and even 20 it was defensible. No longer.
Much as I hate Trump, I can't agree. First there is zero showing that national security was actually or even probably endangered. Second, as to HRC, we really don't know what HRC did because of the patty cake nature of the investigation that took place where she and her people were permitted to destroyed evidence, allowed to assert specious privileges, and, in some cases, immunized without being required to produce evidence in return for immunity when all else failed to protect Hillary.
If a proper investigation had taken place I suspect at the end of the day I would have thought non-prosecution with a special counsel's report about her bad conduct would have been appropriate. Particularly after a proper investigation did not take place with her I think it set a standard that Trump unfortunately should benefit from particularly where we have the Biden conduct regarding classified documents albeit conduct less egregious than Trump's.
All the already brought or contemplated cases against Trump are based on very bad behavior by him except perhaps the civil suit. However, they are all inappropriate and will only (at least in the near term) help Trump's presidential campaign and, thus, hurt the Republican Party.
I acknowledge the Lee Otis point, but it may depend on how fully someone describes a document. The Espionage Act was enacted in 1917, and a lot of former presidents have written memoirs since then. If they used their general knowledge of events described in a classified document, or refreshed their memories by looking at classified documents, and then used the knowledge in the memoir, would that violate the act? I doubt it. Jim Dueholm
It's not exactly how fully someone describes the document, it's whether in the course of talking about the document the person discloses confidential information.
I also just took another look at the indictment, and it says in paragraph 34 that that there is a recorded conversation in which Trump says that what he is showing a writer and two staff members, none of whom has a security clearance, is a plan of attack prepared by the U.S. military against a foreign country. I find it hard to believe that would not be classified. Trump also seems to think it's classified, as he says "Secret. Look, look this is secret information." He then indicates that there must be a way to make it available, but his staff demurs, and he then says it would need to be declassified, and adds "see as President I could have declassified it, but this is still a secret."
The indictment also says in paragraph 35 that in the course of a discussion with a PAC representative about an ongoing military operation in a different country, Trump commented that the operation was not going well, and "showed the PAC representative a classified map of [that] country and told the PAC representative he should not be showing the map to the representative and to not get too close."
So assuming the description of the Haberman story is accurate, she actually understates what Trump did, and it's clear that he did share classified information with these people.
Update. Maggie Haberman in the NY Times reports that Trump, holding a document, told people with him that it was too highly classified to let them see it, but gave them info from it. Haberman cites this to confirm the high classification of the material, which is significant. Even more significant, though, is that, if true, Trump did not allow anyone to review or read the document in question. Haberman, I might add, is a fierce Trump critic, so I'm sure she intended to do him no favors. Jim Dueholm
Documents aren't classified. Information in documents is classified. If the information Trump shared was classified (which I acknowledge we can't quite tell from the quotes in the indictment) he violated the law regardless of whether he shared the document.
I commented at some length to Paul's earlier post in this matter, and I won't repeat that here, except to note that I suspect the prosecution might be a bit over its skis when it claims Trump gave classified material to others, and just summarized for others what was in the documents. If it's a summary, I think that's very material, as I discuss there. Also, it's interesting the indictment does not, if memory serves, allege a violation of or even mention the Presidential Records Act, which will no doubt be part of the Trump defense. As for the point that Hillary didn't intentionally share highly classified material, she really did. All of her emails as Sec. of State were on her private server, and the government said her emails had been hacked. From what I was told at a legal seminar, emails are so insecure government interception of them without warrant is not an unreasonable seizure. Jim Dueholm
Comey said there was a decent chance Hillary’s emails were hacked. Now, I believe she should have been indicted for having them, but I’m not sure we move past that on a “maybe they were hacked.”
Of course I am open to the premise that the FBI knows for certain they are hacked and are covering it up.
Agree completely. Another unforced error. He could just have given everything back when asked.
Perfectly put. More than anything else your position means that if nominated, law abiding citizens cannot support Trump as somehow the lesser of two evils. In 16 and even 20 it was defensible. No longer.
Much as I hate Trump, I can't agree. First there is zero showing that national security was actually or even probably endangered. Second, as to HRC, we really don't know what HRC did because of the patty cake nature of the investigation that took place where she and her people were permitted to destroyed evidence, allowed to assert specious privileges, and, in some cases, immunized without being required to produce evidence in return for immunity when all else failed to protect Hillary.
If a proper investigation had taken place I suspect at the end of the day I would have thought non-prosecution with a special counsel's report about her bad conduct would have been appropriate. Particularly after a proper investigation did not take place with her I think it set a standard that Trump unfortunately should benefit from particularly where we have the Biden conduct regarding classified documents albeit conduct less egregious than Trump's.
All the already brought or contemplated cases against Trump are based on very bad behavior by him except perhaps the civil suit. However, they are all inappropriate and will only (at least in the near term) help Trump's presidential campaign and, thus, hurt the Republican Party.
I acknowledge the Lee Otis point, but it may depend on how fully someone describes a document. The Espionage Act was enacted in 1917, and a lot of former presidents have written memoirs since then. If they used their general knowledge of events described in a classified document, or refreshed their memories by looking at classified documents, and then used the knowledge in the memoir, would that violate the act? I doubt it. Jim Dueholm
It's not exactly how fully someone describes the document, it's whether in the course of talking about the document the person discloses confidential information.
I also just took another look at the indictment, and it says in paragraph 34 that that there is a recorded conversation in which Trump says that what he is showing a writer and two staff members, none of whom has a security clearance, is a plan of attack prepared by the U.S. military against a foreign country. I find it hard to believe that would not be classified. Trump also seems to think it's classified, as he says "Secret. Look, look this is secret information." He then indicates that there must be a way to make it available, but his staff demurs, and he then says it would need to be declassified, and adds "see as President I could have declassified it, but this is still a secret."
The indictment also says in paragraph 35 that in the course of a discussion with a PAC representative about an ongoing military operation in a different country, Trump commented that the operation was not going well, and "showed the PAC representative a classified map of [that] country and told the PAC representative he should not be showing the map to the representative and to not get too close."
So assuming the description of the Haberman story is accurate, she actually understates what Trump did, and it's clear that he did share classified information with these people.
Update. Maggie Haberman in the NY Times reports that Trump, holding a document, told people with him that it was too highly classified to let them see it, but gave them info from it. Haberman cites this to confirm the high classification of the material, which is significant. Even more significant, though, is that, if true, Trump did not allow anyone to review or read the document in question. Haberman, I might add, is a fierce Trump critic, so I'm sure she intended to do him no favors. Jim Dueholm
Documents aren't classified. Information in documents is classified. If the information Trump shared was classified (which I acknowledge we can't quite tell from the quotes in the indictment) he violated the law regardless of whether he shared the document.