i suspect trump should probably be charged with obstruction for classified documents

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it sounds like the classified documents that he had, he shouldn't have had. i can't say that for sure, cause they won't say what exactly he had. 

maybe, trump could be said to have by definition declassified the documents simply by taking them. after all, the constitution says that the president IS the executive branch, so he's the one calling the shots. 

the problem, though, is that he probably still shouldn't have had the documents, even if he can get away on a technicality per crimes. so, if he's going to use a technicality to get away with a crime, i dont think anyone should be afraid to charge him with obstruction of justice. 

after all, he lied and obstructed the FBI trying to get the documents back. he did that after he was president. i mean, maybe they didn't have a right to ask for documents that weren't ultimately classified? i dont know, maybe, but he shouldn't have had them, and the FBI should have been able to ask for them back. 

what do ya'll think? if you support trump in all this, isn't it just based on technicalities? he ultimately did something he shouldn't have, regardless of what the laws are, and you should acknowledge that. 
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@n8nrgim
If this were Bush, or any other president - yeah. He should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for committing actual crimes worse than those he himself demand that his previous political opponent be locked up for.

Unfortunately, this is trump - arguably the most corrupt, criminal president in history - including Nixon. He should probably be put away for the worst of what he did.
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@Ramshutu
what do you think of the argument that trump had effectively declassified the documents, and that the FBI didn't have the right to ask for declassified material? i suppose trump still lied and obstructed, but what happens when you break the law in response to the government breaking the law against you? 
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@n8nrgim
He’s been caught dead to rights. If he wasn’t the former president, he’d be indicted right now. But out of all the illegal things he’s done - this is not the worse, I’d rather see him Imprisoned for his attempt to undermine the peaceful transition of power.
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Eh it's a pipedream. Democrat elites know none of the charges will stick, but they are hoping this will make Trump more popular than DeSantis.
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@n8nrgim
what do you think of the argument that trump had effectively declassified the documents
  1. None of the crimes Trump is being investigated for depend on classification.  Classification is irrelevant for the purposes of determining criminal wrongdoing.
  2. You can easily test the falsity of Trump's claim this way:
    1. Almost any declassified Presidential record is available to a FoIA [freedom of information act] request.
    2. We now know the labels and codes of certain folders of top secret human intelligence (spies), and need-to-know only satellite photos.
    3. Just try to FOIA some of that compartmentalized, eyes only intelligence and watch how fast they say no.
    4. Some of these documents were so secret that FBI agents with top secret clearance weren't allowed to touch them.  
  3. Right before the 2020 Election, Trump declared that he declassified every classified document regarding Hillary Clinton's email.  Folks immediately began submitting FOIA requests only to discover that it was not true, the President can't just say something is declassified and that makes it declassified.  There's a process- NARA has to notified, the registration of the doc has to change, and a NARA official has to come in and modify all the marking on every page.  Until NARA has done so, the document is not declassified.  There's a whole bunch of agencies who have to have an opportunity to object if a President wants to declassify something.  It is true that a President can ask most non top-secret stuff to be declassified and NARA will probably comply but not until a procedure is followed.  Trump never even started that procedure for any of these documents.

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  1. Right before the 2020 Election, Trump declared that he declassified every classified document regarding Hillary Clinton's email.  Folks immediately began submitting FOIA requests only to discover that it was not true, the President can't just say something is declassified and that makes it declassified.  There's a process- NARA has to notified, the registration of the doc has to change, and a NARA official has to come in and modify all the marking on every page.  Until NARA has done so, the document is not declassified.  There's a whole bunch of agencies who have to have an opportunity to object if a President wants to declassify something.  It is true that a President can ask most non top-secret stuff to be declassified and NARA will probably comply but not until a procedure is followed.  Trump never even started that procedure for any of these documents.

but if the constitution says that the executive branch equals the president, how can any process that undermines him be constitutional? he's the executive branch, that means any other part of the branch is subordinate to him. so, if he simply says something is declassified, that seems to make it so, right? 
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@n8nrgim
but if the constitution says that the executive branch equals the president, how can any process that undermines him be constitutional? he's the executive branch, that means any other part of the branch is subordinate to him. so, if he simply says something is declassified, that seems to make it so, right? 
In a monarchy or fascist dictatorship -yes. 

In a democracy- no.

but if the constitution says that the executive branch equals the president, how can any process that undermines him be constitutional?
Presidents swear to God at their inauguration they will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.  That means the President is subject to all kinds of contradicting powers- Congress, SCOTUS, DoJ, Impeachment, 25th amendment, the voters, the media, etc.  By the Founder's design, there are more powers holding back the President than upholding the President.  The Secret Service can tell the President he can't go to the Capitol on Jan 6th.  NARA can override what a President can call personal and what  a President can call Presidential.  The Pentagon can tell the President they won't attack rioters in front of the White House.  There are lots of people in Defense and Intelligence who have a higher clearance level than the President , strangely enough.  The President's powers are narrowly defined and confined.  The position is far less powerful than Trump ever understood and ought to be even less powerful still.
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@oromagi
are there any constitutional or statutory provisions which say the president doesnt have ultimate authority to change classifications at will? i suppose if a statute says it, it would constrain the president. at first, i was thinking that the president's authority would over ride a statute, and i suppose that's one way to look at it, but i think the whole picture approach is that the president is constrained by statutes- cause that's the way it's designed. 
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Codified at 18 U.S.C. § 798, it prohibits knowingly disclosing “to an unauthorized person,” publishing, or “us[ing] in any manner prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United States or for the benefit of any foreign government to the detriment of the United States” a variety of classified information.
that might answer my question

it looks like trump should go to jail, not just for obstruction, but for the underlying crime, mishandling classified material 
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@Greyparrot
are you willing to agree that it looks like trump did a bad thing here? u have a tendency of supporting all things trump, or at least not expressly stating when you think he's wrong. 
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@n8nrgim
Who knows. If the FBI really wants to put someone away, it doesn't seem overly difficult.

In this case, the FBI can wait 500 days and then all of a sudden decide to put you away.

Seems like it's pretty much a done deal that the FBI is not going to be reformed and will be continued to be used by whoever has Congressional political power in a given year. Scary thought if you think what the Republicans could do with an FBI that selectively enforces the law.
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Can anyone actually list a single crime worthy of imprisonment that Trump did where there is conclusive evidence he did it?

He didn't collude with Russia. He didn't use the FBI as his own arm of enforcement. He didn't commit war crimes. He didn't use the DOJ to prosecute political opponents. 

What DID he do that makes him an evil criminal worthy of prison?
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@Public-Choice
if it's illegal what trump did with the classified material, and if the material is critical to national security, then of course he should go to jail for it. 

he also tried to get georgia election officials to invent votes that didn't exist to over turn the election- i dont think he should go to jail for that, but i would understand if someone thought he should. 

i heard from a credible source, though i dont know for sure it's true, that he knowingly put a spy into our government, michael flynn. i dont know if that's prison material, but it might be depending on the specifics. 
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@n8nrgim
if it's illegal what trump did with the classified material, and if the material is critical to national security, then of course he should go to jail for it.
Declassified material is not a national security threat. There is reportedly eyewitness testimony and other physical documents such as emails that show he declassified everything he took with him before his term was completed. Until those emails are made public, we only have the eyewitness testimony of his staffers. Which means all we can do is pick a side. Nothing more. Nothing less. Either his staffers are lying, or they are telling the truth. We can't know for sure until the documents surface.

he also tried to get georgia election officials to invent votes that didn't exist to over turn the election- i dont think he should go to jail for that, but i would understand if someone thought he should. 
Sigh. This is why I largely stopped reading the news and now only skim the topics and go to the original source. Here is the whole, unedited phone call recording:

In the recording, Trump talks about how ballots of his were deleted or destroyed. He tells the people of Georgia to find the destroyed ballots. He does not tell them to create fake ballots. It is a 1 hour phone call. The news literally spliced together snippets of it to create a narrative.

To be honest with you, considering 90% of the intelligence reports surrounding the 2020 election are still classified, and the fact that the WEF openly took credit for swinging Georgia in Biden's direction with a hub they had there for the sole purpose of registering voters likely to vote Democrat and also deliver ballots for people, and also reportedly having connections to the Georgia government officials, it would not surprise me in the slightest if Trump was going off of an intelligence report he received that claimed there could be destroyed ballots in Georgia. Just saying.

Doesn't mean that was the case. I am just saying we can't just claim Trump did things he didn't do because we don't like him and someone else said he did it. We need to go based off primary sources and the facts. And, with all that we DON'T know about the 2020 election because it is classified or simply uninvestigated, or just locked away in a server or room somewhere, we can't claim there was no election fraud in Georgia. What we CAN claim is that Trump believed there was and told Georgia to find the destroyed ballots.

i heard from a credible source, though i dont know for sure it's true, that he knowingly put a spy into our government, michael flynn. i dont know if that's prison material, but it might be depending on the specifics.
And this credible source is?

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@Public-Choice
yes i do acknowledge my points were very fact based. contingent on facts. oromagi was my source on the flynn point. i think this site considers him esteemed enough to be considered credible. he's not always right, though. on the georgia point, my understanding is that trump wanted basically exactly enough votes to turn that election into his favor... there could be no pretense that it's based on actual ballots if he's just trying to game the results like that. i dont pretend that my understanding of the facts are indisputable though. on the classified info stuff, oromagi again has said that there's a process that trump was suppose to go through to declassify the info, and he didn't do it. i changed my opinion, and consider trump to be bound by statutes. maybe he could say executive privilege protects him, as an outgrowth of him being president, but it doesn't look like he didn't commit a crime or obstruction. also, if we just look at the bigger picture, it looks like he was acting in bad faith and as a bad actor- as far as we can tell, anyway. again, i acknowledge all these points are very factually contingent, so. 
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Well, so far as I know, the law states that if the president opens his mouth and says "I am declassifying this," or if he brings up classified material in conversation with anyone at all, it is officially declassified. This system is based off a 1983 Supreme Court ruling in Department of Navy v. Egan.

Here is a politifact article on it:


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@n8nrgim
As far as what Oromagi said, what was the original source? Because from what I understand Flynn lied to Trump and that was why Trump ousted him. Flynn also received money from Russia, like tens of thousands of dollars in money from Russia. It could have been Trump had no idea this happened, or he knew and didn't care. Who knows. I need the original source.
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On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

H. L. Mencken

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@n8nrgim
oromagi was my source on the flynn point.

lol
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I think 2020 was the day it happened!
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-->@oromagi
are there any constitutional or statutory provisions which say the president doesnt have ultimate authority to change classifications at will? i suppose if a statute says it, it would constrain the president. at first, i was thinking that the president's authority would over ride a statute, and i suppose that's one way to look at it, but i think the whole picture approach is that the president is constrained by statutes- cause that's the way it's designed. 
  • there are some but all of that authority was originally derived from some President so there is some question.  
  • For example, the law says that its not declassified until the marking have been changed, but that law was enacted by President Obama so did Trump have to follow it while in office?  Murky but probably not.  No doubt that Trump has to follow that law now that he's out of office.  Likewise, the law says the President can declassify record made during his administration but not prior administration.  He can declassify White House stuff at will but if the documents originated with another Dept, that Dept. has the right to be given 60 days notice and deny declassification.  But then if the declassifier wants to appeal, they can appeal to the President- so does that mean the President can just skip the process and go go straight to declassification.   There are some classifications that say it doesn't matter what anybody say or does, this document can never be declassified under any circumstance.  But since that authority came from Eisenhower, etc. doesn't Trump have the same power?
  • Be sure to notice in all this legal wrangling that Trump has not once claimed declassification in any court document.  That's because as soon as he does, a Judge is within his rights to say "show me the paperwork documenting  that" and if Trump can't (he can't) the Judge is entitled to ignore the claim.  Trump's whole "declassified" claim is for Fox News viewers- he is isn't using that as a legal defense of his actions and couldn't if he wanted to.

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@Public-Choice
i'm too lazy to do solid research, would be much funner watching you two debate. lolz
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@oromagi
How is it that you and I studied the same document and arrived at vastly different conclusions on it? Was it different colleges? Different source material?

If the President is in control of the Executive Branch, then he can't obstruct justice. He also technically can't be prosecuted against by his own Branch unless he specifically allows it.

This was why Congress was given sole power of impeachment. Because the President is in charge of the Executive Branch.

But this is also why the Judicial Branch was set up. This way neither Congress nor the President could take total control of the criminal justice system.

Our Country is also not a democracy. It is a Republic. [1] It has very little democracy in it whatsoever. We do not vote in the Supreme Court Justices. We do not vote in the President's cabinet. We do not vote in the various departments the President makes. We do not vote in most of the Congressmen who are even in there. At most, only 3 offices are actually decided via democracy individually by all of us. Each state's 2 Senate seats, and one Congressional Representative for each district. We do not vote on every law. We do not vote on all 435 members of Congress, and we technically don't even vote for the President. Electors, who are decided by the states, do that. It is a Republic. Not a Democracy.

Also, there is nobody in the Pentagon who has a higher clearance level than the President. This was established in Department of Navy v. Egan in 1983. The President has the highest clearance level there is by nature of him controlling the Executive Branch. 

BUT... he also doesn't actually have a security clearance in the official sense, [2] because he can give them out to whomever he wants and also can control what is and is not classified, there is no reason to give him a clearance he doesn't need and controls the dispersion of anyways.

But, point being, the President has access to all the classified intelligence he wants to by nature of being President. He can also revoke anyone's clearance at any time, even top members of the Pentagon, if he so chooses.

Our Constitution was founded based on the idea of Separation of Powers by Montesquieu. So, theoretically, Congress could sue the President and the President could sue Congress. But, believe it or not, the President DOES have the power to pardon himself of everything except impeachment. So even if the DOJ somehow managed to charge him of a crime, he could just pardon himself. This is specifically why impeachment is not a legal doctrine but a Congressional proceeding. Because if it was a legal doctrine then the President could simply pardon himself from impeachment as head of the Executive Branch.

The idea of the President pardoning himself was debated extensively at the Constitutional Convention and the conclusion was the Executive Branch would simply wait until after the President is impeached to then bring charges against the individual. [3]

SOURCES:
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@Public-Choice
I think 2020 was the day it happened!
Moron is genderless. Kamala will be crowned queen after November.
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@Public-Choice

Can anyone actually list a single crime worthy of imprisonment that Trump did where there is conclusive evidence he did it?
  • There's hundreds, but just off the top of my head-

  • Directed illegal hush money payments to sexual accusers via National Enquire, Michael Cohen.  Cohen convicted.
  • Illegally interfered with ATT/Time Warner merger to punish CNN.  Caused AT&T to pay billions in penalties.
He didn't use the FBI as his own arm of enforcement. He didn't use the DOJ to prosecute political opponents
  • Illegally pressured DoJ and FBI to investigates Clintons, Hunter Biden, Mueller.  Illegally pressured foreign powers to investigate Clintons, Hunter Biden, Mueller.  Just because said no doesn't make Trump pressure campaigns any less felonious.
  • Illegally soliciting foreign aid and intervention in US elections
  • Foreign Emoluments-  requiring secret service to pay for hotel rooms he owned, telling foreign powers to stay at hotels he owned, awarded the G07 conference to his own Doral country club,  Jared accepting millions in copyrights and trade deals from China, Jared accepting $2 billion from Saudis  (after leaving office), etc.
  • 10 counts of obstruction of justice documented by Mueller (20 years each)
  • Election Fraud- declaring mail-in ballots illegal, slowing down postal delivery, filing fraudulent claims in court, pressuring State officials to change results, etc.
  • Attempted coup, obstruction of a constitutionally mandated election process, attempted assassination of the Vice-President, Speaker of the House


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@oromagi
Primary source documents please. Not media accounts and anonymous sources, actual eyewitness accounts and documentation from Trump himself.
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@Public-Choice

Declassified material is not a national security threat.

  • No but stealing government secrets, foreign intel, human intel, satellite photos is espionage at any classification levl

There is reprtedly eyewitness testimony and other physical documents such as emails that show he declassified everything he took with him before his term was completed. Until those emails are made public, we only have the eyewitness testimony of his staffers. Which means all we can do is pick a side. Nothing more. Nothing less. Either his staffers are lying, or they are telling the truth. We can't know for sure until the documents surface.
  • False and irrelevant.  Trump is only making those declassification claims to the masses.  None of the documents submitted in court make any claims of declassification.
He tells the people of Georgia to find the destroyed ballots. He does not tell them to create fake ballots. It is a 1 hour phone call. The news literally spliced together snippets of it to create a narrative.
  • False, the Secretary of State had already explained multiple times to Trump that he was misinformed.  Then Trump tell him the exact number of ballots he expects him to "discover."  Even the fact of the phone call itself is illegal.  The president can't be calling election officials and discussing ballot counts with them, period.  The content is almost irrelevant to the felony of the phone call itself.
90% of the intelligence reports surrounding the 2020 election are still classified,
  • false
for the sole purpose of registering voters likely to vote Democrat and also deliver ballots for people,
  • not a crime
What we CAN claim is that Trump believed there was and told Georgia to find the destroyed ballots.
  • If he did it was only because he hundreds of reports by his own people that it was all bullshit
And this credible source is?
  • Michael Flynn testified to his crimes under oath on at least two occasions.  Trump's pardon effectively certifies those crimes.

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@Public-Choice
How is it that you and I studied the same document and arrived at vastly different conclusions on it? 
Probably because you rely on information from Epoch Times, Christian Headlines, NY Post, etc.

You start with Trump's claims and work your way towards confirming information rather than vice-versa.
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@Public-Choice
Primary source documents please. Not media accounts and anonymous sources, actual eyewitness accounts and documentation from Trump himself.


Front Page New York Times last seven years.

By definition, all testimony by Trump is unreliable.  Using any official count, Trump is the most prolific liar in human history and so the least reliable source possible on any subject.