This Is Fine

 




And today's award for uncanny prescience goes to Joy Pullman, who this morning published the following:


UPDATES: 8/9/22

by Alan Dershowitz

... it is now up to the Justice Department and the FBI to justify their actions to the American public. They must explain why a different standard appears to have been applied to Democrats such as Clinton and Berger than to Republicans such as Trump and many of his associates.


For an All-Politics View


For an Alt-Reality View

28 comments:

Anonymous said...

blocked by pop ups, unable to view

Grim said...

The NYT is running a piece arguing that being convicted of this particular law -- the very one the DOJ declined to indict Hillary Clinton over in spite of having her dead to rights -- might make Trump ineligible to run for any office ever again.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/08/us/politics/donald-trump-president-criminal-law.html

If they used that same law in that particular way with that argument after the way they refused to prosecute HRC, it would be extremely difficult to argue that the law hasn't become merely a political tool.

Elise said...

I need a source to point people to for the HRC incident(s). Is this what you're referring to, Grim, or is there more I've forgotten about: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/07/clintons-handling-of-classified-information/

If this is Merrick Garland getting revenge or an out-of-control FBI, that's bad enough. But if Biden/the Democrats are in on this, it's even more worrisome because I find it hard to believe they'd go down this path unless they were absolutely certain they would retain control of Congress after this year. I worry about the source of that certainty.

Grim said...

I’d be sure to reference a source that mentions the designation TOP SECRET//SI/TK/NOFORN. Some of this was very highly classified. Also the deletions of government records (and that the avoidance of having her words in government records being the point of the whole secret server). This is the very law they’re going after Trump with, having refused to prosecute her. (Also irregular was pushing the decision on prosecuting her down to the FBI, which normally does not make those decisions; that was politically necessary because Bill Clinton got caught secretly meeting with AG Lynch.)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3196774/Hillary-s-emails-contained-secret-CIA-intelligence-satellite-info-panic-hits-Democrats-campaign-issues-4-000-word-explanation-s-innocent.html

Elise said...

Aah, thanks - I'd forgotten the Clinton/Lynch meeting. And thanks for the link.

Andrew McCarthy has an interesting take on the MAL search: the FBI/DOJ/Administration/Congress has no intention of going after Trump over classified documents; instead, they used that as a pretext to search his home looking for a smoking gun with regard to January 6th:
https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/08/the-fbis-mar-a-lago-raid-its-about-the-capitol-riot-not-the-mishandling-of-classified-information/

Christopher B said...

McCarty's take maybe accurate but is still a bunch of double-talk intended to make his former buddies in the FBI and DOJ sound smart instead of corrupt. Covering up a J6 fishing expedition with bogus claims that Trump is destroying WH records at Mar-a-largo is like taking a crap on your carpet to cover a coffee stain.

Grim said...

Yeah, the use of this charge specifically is a stick in the eye. Doing it as a pretext is actually even worse than doing it because you think it might really be something he was guilty of having done.

E Hines said...

I’d be sure to reference a source that mentions the designation TOP SECRET//SI/TK/NOFORN. Some of this was very highly classified.

I've seen reports--as unsubstantiated as any other press reports, so...--that Trump had declassified docs, which a President of the US has the authority to do, before he removed any; he was just sloppy in removing the markings. The markings, anyway, don't classify anything; they only indicate the existence of an already done classification. Except when they're carelessly not removed following declass.

That adds to the premium on providing that citation.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

If he was also sloppy about documenting which documents he was declassifying, he could find himself being prosecuted anyway. That will just be the more destructive given the refusal to prosecute her over these highest-level classified documents that she had on her unsecured server.

Elise said...

Doing it as a pretext is actually even worse than doing it because you think it might really be something he was guilty of having done.

I disagree. I don't think there's any "worse" here or any better: it's just bad. And I did not get the sense that McCarthy was trying "to make his former buddies in the FBI and DOJ sound smart instead of corrupt." I read his article as a damning indictment of the DOJ and the FBI responding to "pressure" from the Democrats.

It will get very interesting if the FBI does find (or "find) any January 6 smoking guns. I'm unlikely to believe them about anything they find and I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that.

Anonymous said...

Trump has a copy of the warrant with details of what the Republican Wray’s FBI was looking for, signed off by a Reagan judge and what they took during the raid. Why doesn’t he release it instead of whining and stoking resistance and potentially violence? What’s he afraid of revealing? Release the warrant.

Christopher B said...

Just as in the searches of Clark and Eastman, the Bureau and Justice Department prosecutors were looking for evidence powerfully showing that the former president and his confederates knew their stolen-election claims were false. That’s what the DOJ needs, at a minimum, to indict Trump for crimes arising out of the January 6 uprising.

In a powder keg, AG Garland is trying to turn up a smoking gun. Unless he can make a convincing violent-crime case against Trump, though, an indictment based on extravagant theories of fraud or mishandling of classified documents will blow up on the Justice Department.


Elise, I think the ending to McCarthy's article quoted above clearly indicates he believes that Garland may actually find indictable crimes in Trump's conduct on J6 and is not merely responding to pressure from Democrats. I see nothing in the article that indicates McCarthy thinks Garland and the DOJ are doing anything improper right now, he's mostly worried about the optics of the raid and the possibility that they might be rushed into an indictment that won't secure a conviction.

Christopher B said...

I don't know where the poster above is getting info but this is the judge who signed off on the warrant

https://nypost.com/2022/08/09/judge-who-approved-fbi-raid-on-mar-a-lago-once-linked-to-jeffrey-epstein/

Selected quotes

Before entering private practice in 2008, Reinhart spent 12 years as a federal prosecutor.

Reinhart was elevated to magistrate judge in March 2018 after 10 years in private practice.

According to the Herald, which cited court documents, Reinhart resigned from the South Florida US Attorney’s Office effective on New Year’s Day 2008...

...according to Federal Election Commission records, Reinhart gave $1,000 directly to the Obama campaign and another $1,000 to its fundraising arm, the Obama Victory Fund. Though the records show the judge made mostly small-dollar donations to his law firm’s political action committee in subsequent years, Reinhart also donated $500 to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign in November 2015.

Jonathan said...

It doesn't matter if there's a plausible legal pretext for raiding Trump. Trump isn't being accused of robbing a liquor store, he's being accused of taking actions as President that his political opponents say were illegal and his supporters believe were trivial. IOW this is a political controversy, and the way you deal with political controversies is with elections.

What makes Biden's people especially corrupt is that their actions, while perhaps superficially justifiable under law, are obviously intended to disenfranchise the voters by stopping Trump from running for office again.

Grim said...

Under house rules y ou have to sign your comments, anonymous, with some persistent identifier. It doesn't have to be your real name, but we can't keep all the anonymous people straight if nobody signs their comments.

As for why Trump does or doesn't do anything, I have no idea. My sense about him is that he learned his political style and rhetorical style both from his time with the World Wrestling Federation, in which maximizing dramatic conflict is always advantageous to both sides. Certainly both sides have raised red fortunes on him!

E Hines said...

If he was also sloppy about documenting which documents he was declassifying, he could find himself being prosecuted anyway.

Side bit of humor (maybe): when I was starting out as a brand new 2nd Lt in a NORAD blockhouse, one of our senior NCOs was busily burning classified from a long stack of file cabinets that hadn't been properly purged in some years. It was a big pile that he had to burn, and he was about halfway through the hours long task.

I suggested to him (tongue in cheek) that he ought to be keeping a copy of everything he burned so he'd have a record of the destruction. If looks could kill, I wouldn't be here today.

Eric Hines

E Hines said...

Trump has a copy of the warrant with details of what the Republican Wray’s FBI was looking for, signed off by a Reagan judge and what they took during the raid.

It's not at all clear that Trump--or any of his representatives, since he wasn't present during the raid--has a copy of the warrant.

Nor was it signed off on by a Reagan judge, or any Article III judge at all. It was signed off on by a magistrate judge.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

or any Article III judge at all. It was signed off on by a magistrate judge.

That was reckless.

If looks could kill, I wouldn't be here today.

Many a once-young butterbar is only alive today because of this natural immunity.

Tom said...

I suggested to him (tongue in cheek) that he ought to be keeping a copy of everything he burned so he'd have a record of the destruction. If looks could kill, I wouldn't be here today.

That's funny. I always heard that you should type everything in triplicate (back, you know, when we typed): one for our records, one for your records, and one to burn so the Russians don't get it.

Tom said...

On Twitter, @RealBrittHughes says: "If Donald Trump did take something, he should have hidden it under Hunter's pile of hookers and blow. No one ever looks there."

Grim said...

"...and one to burn so the Russians don't get it."

Now that's good!

Anonymous said...

Why are Trump lawyers on the tube on Fox News already floating “the FBI planted it” stories when … no one knows what the heck it’s even all about yet? Why won’t Trump just release the warrant? Methinks the crime lord is caught.

Anonymous said...

Sorry I missed adding my name. I’m bc.

Elise said...

Christopher B, the article reads differently to me. Perhaps that means this is a straight reporting job by McCarthy on what he thinks the DOJ/FBI are up to and any approval or condemnation is up to the readers.

E Hines said...

Why are Trump lawyers on the tube on Fox News already floating “the FBI planted it” stories when … no one knows what the heck it’s even all about yet?

They're not; they're saying "maybe," and "what if." On the other hand, this is the same FBI that refused to do anything about Hillary Clinton and her unauthorized server on which she was storing classified material, and the same FBI that falsified "data" in its pursuit of FISA warrants, and the same FBI whose then-director took out, without authorization, department materials on his own way out the door. There's no reason to trust this FBI.

Why won’t Trump just release the warrant?

A couple of us have already been over that. I'm not going to waste time repeating.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Methinks the crime lord is caught.

I can't see Trump as a 'crime lord' any more than I can see him as a successful university president or a masterful casino operator. He's likely as not violated classification law through what Comey chose to call "extreme carelessness" when Hillary Clinton did it (because "gross negligence" is the statutory language for the crime he wanted to excuse her of committing). That's in character, for sure. It's still destabilizing to move along such obviously political rails, which split into two very different tracks depending on who is being handled.

Grim said...

Today the AP reminds us that not just Clinton but Petraeus skated on these charges.

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-investigation-legal-questions-e56a8aa3b6230e602af269935d1e6d15

The action Monday nonetheless focuses attention on the thicket of statutes that govern the handling of government records, though the department’s own history of prosecutorial discretion — some high-profile investigations have ended without charges or in misdemeanor plea deals — makes it hard to forecast with certainty what might happen this time.

“These are statutes that have historically not been enforced to the fullest extent,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck.

...

But if past is any precedent, the mere mishandling of classified information isn’t always enough for a felony conviction — or any charges at all.

douglas said...

If Trump were a "crime lord", you'd think that he'd have had a conviction hung on him by now, given all the investigations that have occurred- and yet nothing. I've started to think he may be the cleanest man in D.C. (although that's an awfully low bar).

I thought that McCarthy said (on air at least) that that US code section was unconstitutional because the Constitution lays out both the requirements to run for President, and the disqualifying factors, and so the legislature cannot simply amend the Constitution by statute. Seems right to me.