FBI 'raided' Mar-a-Lago

[TheTexan]

No need to produce them until they tell you they lost the originals.

Maybe, but again, a lot of the advice/assumptions/criticism in this thread assumes that we aren't living a lawless fucking clown world to begin with.

Any good advice for staying legally protected in the past, no longer really applies. And when I say that, I mean in a general sense across the board, and not just this.

 

[GlennwaldSnowdenAssanged]

Maybe, but again, a lot of the advice/assumptions/criticism in this thread assumes that we aren't living a lawless $#@!ing clown world to begin with.

Any good advice for staying legally protected in the past, no longer really applies. And when I say that, I mean in a general sense across the board, and not just this.

I agree. The law is extremely malleable at this time.

 

[ClaytonB]

He doesn't have to prove that he declassified them.

The state has to prove that he didn't.

That's the law as it stands currently. If that sounds ridiculous because he could just lie about it... then change the law.

 

[Todd]

It sure would have been nice if Trump had blown the whistle on this criminal FBI activity that he had proof of for all that time in documents that he had personally declassified.

Geez...Can't you see it's just him playing that 3D 4D bomb diggity chess he's been playing now going on 6 years. You know.....Locking up Hillary, ending all the foreign intervention, and draining his lizard....er....I mean Swamp.

 

[acptulsa]

 

[Invisible Man]

I was referring to the Jan 19 EO where he very clearly did declassify the Crossfire Hurricane documents. If it's not the CH documents, then there would be no obvious reason for him or anyone to release anything, and your whole point becomes moot.

I am certain that the federal government possesses tons and tons of classified documents related to countless things other than CH that there are many good reasons for anyone who cares about the country or justice to release. And if the imaginarily declassified documents were not such that anyone would have reason to release them, then by the same token why declassify them? It would only make the notion that he did secretly declassify whatever the documents were all the more ludicrous if he had no desire for them to be released.

 

[Snowball]

I am certain that the federal government possesses tons and tons of classified documents related to countless things other than CH that there are many good reasons for anyone who cares about the country or justice to release. And if the imaginarily declassified documents were not such that anyone would have reason to release them, then by the same token why declassify them. It would only make the notion that he did secretly declassify whatever the documents were all the more ludicrous if he had no desire for them to be released.

Although there is ample reason to suspect that this is all an attempt to tie up Trump so he cannot campaign effectively, if the documents were truly declassified, then he had the power the release them, not only to others in his administration, none of whom are saying he did that, but to the public-at-large. He didn't do it. So, therefore we have to assume that his "declassification" was only for purposes of benefit to himself and those in his personal circle at Mar-a-Lago, or anyone he decided to share them with... is that declassification? No.

Trump isn't giving us ANY information about these documents. He lied already when he said they were just mementos and stuff. These are extremely serious charges with lots of TOP LEVEL classified material of VARIOUS agency sources and they are VOLATILE.

It's up to Trump to tell us more about them. He won't -- and didn't when he had the power. That's because he never declassified them. Trump did absolutely NOTHING to declassify or reveal found information while he was President about the lies and tales and ongoing disinformation this country performs against not only foreign countries but ourselves -- Americans. That's his choice just like it's the choice of his adherents to LARP 5d chess at every event surrounding him. His automatic defenders need to wake up and smell the coffee. He's no selfless hero. What level of courage or convictions the man actually possesses is highly debatable.

 

[Invisible Man]

He doesn't have to prove that he declassified them.

The state has to prove that he didn't.

That's correct. They have to prove it beyond reasonable doubt. As in, it's not enough to counter their proof with some imaginary and silly hypothetical possibility that no reasonable person would buy. They must only overcome such doubts as are actually reasonable.

I don't know what evidence the case against Trump will be built on. But for the sake of argument, suppose the feds have evidence like the following: eyewitnesses testifying that they saw documents marked as "classified" or "top secret" and other such things in Trump's home, documents having those markings that were recovered in their raid complete with photographs and a solid chain of custody, current up to date records in government agencies of those documents still being classified, confirmation from the National Declassification Center that Trump never declassified those documents pursuant to the legal procedures that existed when he was president and that had been established by former presidents with the very same power over declassification that you have repeatedly referred to and that Trump himself never officially altered and that his own administration followed for the entirety of his tenure and that are still in place and being followed by the Biden administration today.

And suppose that Trump's attempt to cast reasonable doubt on that evidence is a claim that he makes now for the first time as an ex-president to the effect that back when he was president he secretly declassified the classified documents he later was caught having simply by thinking the thought and not telling anyone until after he was caught with them later on as an ex-president, with no reasonable explanation as to why he chose to declassify them that way if he really wanted to be able to continue to treat them as declassified later on when he was no longer going to be president.

Trump's silly explanation would not rise to the level of a reasonable doubt, and the government's case against him would easily stand as proven.

 

[Invisible Man]

Although there is ample reason to suspect that this is all an attempt to tie up Trump so he cannot campaign effectively, if the documents were truly declassified, then he had the power the release them, not only to others in his administration, none of whom are saying he did that, but to the public-at-large. He didn't do it. So, therefore we have to assume that his "declassification" was only for purposes of benefit to himself and those in his personal circle at Mar-a-Lago, or anyone he decided to share them with... is that declassification? No.

Exactly.

There was a comment earlier in the thread where someone said that if Obama had done this same thing they would question his motives, but with Trump they have no question that he only did it for the good of the country.

That kind of TDS is what bothers me so much.

Just because we don't support Garland or the FBI or the raid doesn't mean we have to swing the pendulum over to the side of believing such silliness.

 

[Snowball]

Exactly.

There was a comment earlier in the thread where someone said that if Obama had done this same thing they would question his motives, but with Trump they have no question that he only did it for the good of the country.

That kind of TDS is what bothers me so much.

Just because we don't support Garland or the FBI or the raid doesn't mean we have to swing the pendulum over to the side of believing such silliness.

Less silly would be the conclusion that he's a rat working for some other entity and grabbed this information to share it with that party. Everyone needs to take another look at the markings and ask themselves -- CUI BONO ?

184 unique documents bearing classification markings
67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL
92 documents marked as SECRET
25 documents marked as TOP SECRET
other documents marked as HCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI.
which means they contain NDI.
Handwritten notes

TOP SECRET - Top Level Sensitive Compartmented Information
HCS - Human Control System (HUMINT) Human Intelligence
FISA - Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
ORCON - Originator Controlled Military, Army Intelligence
NOFORN - No Foreign National
SI - Sensitive Information
NDI - National Defense Intelligence

What in all FVCK was he doing with this stuff at Mar-a-Lago? He ain't talking.. all he does is whine.

 

[Sonny Tufts]

Also, can you name one thing that I believe that Trump got me to believe that you can prove is incorrect? I got a list of potentially 12 things you believe that I can demonstrably prove are BS, but you haven't given us your score on the quiz.

Prove that I believe all of the things on your list.

But I do believe #9, and the burden's not on me to prove it's true. I don't know whether you believe the election was stolen or, if you do, whether it's because you swallowed Trump's claims that it was. But the undeniable fact is that Trump and his lemmings filed a boatload of lawsuits seeking to change the results and failed miserably. In addition, some of his lemmings sent phony slates of electors to the National Archives; that didn't work either.

So you think you can demonstrably prove that the claim that the election was fair because there was no major fraud is BS? Well why didn't Trump hire you?

The bottom line is that after all of the legal procedures for determining the outcome of the election concluded, Biden was declared the winner, despite all of the lawsuits and despite Trump's moronic attempt to have Pence do something in connection with the counting of the electoral votes that he had no authority to do.

 

[Sonny Tufts]

The President doesn't need any process to declassify something.

The Presidential Records Act (44 USC 2203) provides, "Through the implementation of records management controls and other necessary actions, the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of the President's constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are preserved and maintained as Presidential records" If he really declassified something without documenting it, he violated this provision.

Documents record the Preident's phone calls, visitors, Executive Orders, travels, and a host of other things. Hell, they may even record when he takes a dump. But declassifying top secret material? That doesn't need to be documented? LOL!

Every single person on the right can answer this question, and you don't have a clue? You need to diversify your news sources. A lot of what he took was related to Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which he believed would be destroyed if he left it there. You don't think he made copies?

How do you know what he took? Have you seen what's in the boxes that were retrieved in the execution of the search warrant?

 

[ClaytonB]

What in all FVCK was he doing with this stuff at Mar-a-Lago? He ain't talking.. all he does is whine.

Gee, I wonder what ex-POTUS is doing with documents about his time as POTUS... especially given the fact that the witch-hunt over what he was doing (pre-POTUS, POTUS and now ex-POTUS) continues, amain.

HUGE mystery...

 

[fcreature]

then why didn't he release this declassified information he had?

You are making this so much more complicated than it is.

Declassification !== public release

Declassification is much easier, and completely and totally at POTUS's discretion. Public release is much trickier, and very very likely to put him in prison on obstruction charges or some other nonsense process crimes. This is why there are always on-going investigations involving the materials Trump wanted to declassify (and eventually did).

I think there may have been ways to publicly release the documents while insulating himself from prosecution, but it would have been very risky and would have required congressional support, very good lawyers and people he could trust. As I have also said, Trump failed in this regard - he had none of that. But I don't blame him very much because in all likelihood it would have resulted in him sitting in prison now, and I can understand why he wouldn't like that outcome.

 

[fcreature]

if the documents were truly declassified, then he had the power the release them, not only to others in his administration, none of whom are saying he did that, but to the public-at-large

This is not true.

 

[ClaytonB]

No. That doesn't logically follow.

Just because he had the authority to declassify the documents doesn't mean he actually did.

If he did, let's see him prove he did. If he thinks he did, but he has no proof that he did because he thinks he declassified them by some secret fiat that only he knows about, while he left the documents to be officially kept in their classified status as far as the offices of the government that keep records of that are concerned, then he's really an idiot and asked for everything that happened.

This is a picture-perfect recitation of the Biden FBI's view of the matter. It's a tempest in a teapot, ginned up for purely political purposes. But this is a perfect recitation of the party line.

Let's restate it in other terms: "A procedure wasn't followed!"

Big deal. Classification exists so that the executive (that's POTUS) can control information, not the other way around. The bureaucrats are just the gears-and-levers by which this machine operates, but it operates on behalf of POTUS. Until Jan 2020, that was Donald Trump, like it or not. Trump didn't get neuralyzed by a Men-in-Black neuralyzer when he left office so, guess what, all that "Top Secret Classified Info!!1!111" is still in his head. So the idea that classification is some kind of impenetrable barrier or wall that contains some kind of lake of information that "cannot leak" is downright silly. If there were some forms/procedures that the bureaucrats needed him to perform, that's just checkbox BS... even after leaving office. POTUS is not like any other inferior Federal official... he is in a class entirely his own. That's the whole point of having an executive: to place all the discretionary powers of the presidency into a single individual, eliminating all of the bureaucratic and deliberative delays that necessarily come with a legislative body or a headless bureaucracy.

This is equally true of Clinton, Bush, Obama, etc. Every ex-President has had absolutely unrestricted access to all classified info in the Executive. POTUS doesn't need to be read-in to a program... he's automatically read-in to all programs, because he's the root of classification authority. The witch-hunters are trying to treat Trump in the same category as a rogue ex-Department of Education head, or something, that has run off with "boxes of classified government documents". It's absurd, and they know it. This kind of BS has never before been stunted on an ex-POTUS, not because they don't have access to TS/SCI info (they all do, duh), but because it's what they've calculated is their best chance to get their licks in on Trump.

Purely political theater and nonsense. Pop up a bag of popcorn... this show's about to get good...

 

[Sonny Tufts]

The President has the unilateral authority to declassify documents. Period. If you want to know whether the documents at Mar-a-lago were declassified, you just have to ask him.

Why should anyone assume he'd tell the truth?

For somebody to be convicted of a crime, you need to prove they are guilty. The person being investigated does not need to prove they are innocent.

If the issue of whether Trump declassified the documents he took ever came up in a criminal proceeding against him the government would attempt to prove it by circumstantial evidence, including other instances of his declassifying things in writing (e.g., the Crossfire Hurricane materials) and maybe even the fact that he always did so. They might also produce evidence of past declassification practices of Presidents (in order to show, for example, that no declassification had ever been accomplished without documentation). He would then be cross-examined and asked why he failed to document his decision as to the materials he took and why he never notified the National Archives or anyone else in the government who would need to know about the declassification. Ultimately, it would likely boil down to a credibility issue -- would a jury believe Trump's after-the-fact claim?

Invisible Man hit the nail on the head. If Trump has no written evidence of his declassification claim, he''s an idiot.

 

[Sonny Tufts]

The law as it stands does not specify a goddamn thing related to process

The PRA does.

 

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/KeithOlbermann/status/1563243471074623490

 

[TheTexan]

The PRA does.

That does not specify a process, it just says "things should be documented".

Additionally, there are no criminal charges associated with violating that provision, which makes it more of a recommendation than a law.