Replies to post #446786 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

hap0206, It's a real shame you and Murdoch's WSJ has joined so many of your extreme right-wing GOP of today in the lie that the Democrats
have weaponized the rule of law in your country. It's a shame though no surprise either you or the editorial board would take that position.

The alternate to the indictment, of course, would be that Smith and his team had found the evidence which a grand jury has decided
warrants an indictment, then ignored the grand jury decision. Seems to me that would be throwing your rule of law under a bad bus.

The opinion above is simply based on what i've read, and not being a WSJ subscriber i'm unable to read the bits of the article you did not post. I did grab:

Donald Trump, the Presidential Records Act and ‘Clinton's sock drawer’ defense

By Alison Frankel

June 10, 20236:51 AM GMT+10 Updated a day ago


The first page of the U.S. Justice Department's charging document against former U.S. President
Donald Trump and his employee Waltine Nauta, charging Trump with 37 criminal counts, including
charges of unauthorized retention of classified documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice after
leaving the White House, is seen after being released by the Justice Department in
Washington, U.S. June 9, 2023. REUTERS/Jim Bourg

(Reuters) - If you believe the most ardent defenders of newly indicted .. https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-faces-federal-charges-classified-documents-case-adding-legal-woes-2023-06-09/ .. former president Donald Trump, there’s a silver bullet hiding in Bill Clinton’s sock drawer.

The reference to Clinton’s socks, which has cropped up not just in the former president’s Truth Social feed and at conservative news outlets .. https://www.oann.com/newsroom/judicial-watch-clinton-sock-drawer-audio-tape-case-exonerates-pres-trump/ .. but even in Trump court filings .. https://tmsnrt.rs/43NXhOs , stems from a 13-year-old case in which the right-leaning nonprofit Judicial Watch sought access to 79 audio tape recordings of Clinton interviews conducted by the historian Taylor Branch while Clinton was in office.

During his presidency, according to GQ magazine in a 2009 Q&A with Branch .. https://www.gq.com/story/the-bill-clinton-tapes , Clinton “squirreled away the cassettes in his sock drawer.” But for Trump’s purposes, what matters is Clinton’s handling of the tapes after he left office: Clinton designated the recordings as personal records, not official presidential records, that were therefore not required to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration under the Presidential Records Act.

Judicial Watch sued over that designation, arguing that the tapes captured classified information including Clinton conversations with foreign leaders.

But in a 2012 opinion .. https://tmsnrt.rs/3N6L4xQ , the trial judge overseeing Judicial Watch’s lawsuit ruled that even if the tapes should have been designated to be presidential records, she could not order the National Archives to recategorize them.

“The [Presidential Records Act] does not confer any mandatory or even discretional authority on the archivist,” wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in that 2012 ruling. “Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the president.”

That language, as I’ll explain, has emboldened Trump supporters who contend that under Jackson's analysis, the Justice Department had no authority to seize documents from Mar-a-Lago.

That theory is vigorously disputed by national security experts, including former National Archives litigation director Jason Baron, who is now a professor at the University of Maryland, and Bradley Moss of the Mark S. Zaid law firm.

Both Baron and Moss told me by email that there are clear distinctions between the audiotapes at issue in the Clinton case and the classified records in the Trump criminal case.

The Clinton tapes, Baron said, “were in the nature of a diary or journal in recorded form,” fitting the definition of a personal record in the Presidential Records Act. But the documents with classified markings that were seized from Mar-a-Lago, Baron said, “were official government records that should never have been transferred out of the government's hands.”

Moreover, Moss said, the question of whether the documents were personal or presidential records is beside the point in a case involving the Espionage Act, like the one against Trump.

“Whether as a presidential record or a personal record, the records at issue in this indictment still have classification markings and contain information relating to the national defense,” he said.

Trump defense counsel Todd Blanche did not immediately respond to a query sent to his law firm.

Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton nevertheless maintained in an interview on Friday that Jackson’s opinion in the Clinton case shows Trump had unfettered power to designate documents as personal records outside of the reach of the National Archives.

“The strong opinion from the court says the president has prerogatives that cannot be second-guessed,” Fitton said. “These are not presidential records,” he added. “These are personal records.”

Under Fitton’s theory, Trump – who has said he is innocent of all wrongdoing -- can’t be criminally liable for refusing to turn over documents he designated to be personal. Trump’s attorneys posited a similar argument in a brief last November to a special master appointed to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.

The Presidential Records Act, Trump’s brief said, gave Trump the sole authority to decide how to categorize his records. “When he made a designation decision, he was president of the United States; his decision to retain certain records as personal is entitled to deference, and the records in question are thus presumptively personal,” the brief said. (The merits of that argument were never decided because the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held in December .. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-reverses-appointment-special-master-trump-documents-probe-2022-12-01/ .. that the special master should not have been appointed.)

Fitton told me he explained his Presidential Records Act theory to the Washington, D.C., grand jury in the Trump document case last winter. Fitton said prosecutors seemed to use his four-hour grand jury session to sus out Trump’s potential defense.

Special counsel Jack Smith and his team, Fitton joked, “probably didn’t think much of it – hence the indictment.”

It nevertheless seems likely that Fitton and other Trump allies will continue to use the sock drawer case to argue that the Justice Department is selectively prosecuting the former president.

Fitton, for instance, accused the Justice Department of flipping its position on presidential discretion under the Presidential Record Act to go after Trump. In the Clinton case, he said, the Justice Department argued that the Archive was not empowered to recategorize material that Clinton had designated to be a personal record. The department, Fitton said, abandoned that stance when it seized Trump's documents.

“It’s so outrageous,” he said. “I think this is a substantial issue.”

That argument could have political salience among Trump backers asserting that the Justice Department has been “weaponized” to pursue the former president. But as a matter of law, said professor Margaret Kwoka of Ohio State University, Jackson’s ruling in the Judicial Watch case isn’t going to be much help for Trump. “These are completely different kinds of records,” she said. “And there are different legal obligations when it comes to the handling of classified records.”

In other words, for a former president accused of repeatedly violating the Espionage Act, the sock drawer case is probably more of a red herring than a silver bullet.

Read more:

Trump risked national secrets, US prosecutors allege in indictment
https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-faces-federal-charges-classified-documents-case-adding-legal-woes-2023-06-09/

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/donald-trump-presidential-records-act-clintons-sock-drawer-defense-2023-06-09/

I don't understand your point. Fact is that Trump took documents from the White House that belonged to the government. They didn't belong
to him as he claimed. Then he obstructed the effort to get all relevant documents back where they belonged. Excerpt from another:

Investigators seized roughly 13,000 documents from Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, nearly a year ago.

One hundred were marked as classified, even though one of Mr Trump's lawyers had previously
said all records with classified markings had been returned to the government.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-10/donald-trump-indictment-unsealed-by-prosecutors-espionage-act/102465208

if there is something more in your article you see as important you should post it in it's entirety.

[hookrider]

Hap0206: "Whether you love or hate Donald Trump, his indictment by President Biden’s Justice Department is a fraught moment for American democracy. For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President."

Well son, it was bad enough he (Trump) Fuck Over the people of the USA, when was president. How he is Fuck Over those same people while Joe Biden is president. If he is not stopped he will Fuck Over who ever comes after Biden!!! Trump must go down for the sake of the people of The USA.