I’m not saying I believe it, I hate Trump and wouldn’t vote for him if my life depended on it (and I can say that almost literally)… I’m saying that to many on the right it will be a very plausible argument. This is already being framed by the right as a vengeful action to keep Trump out of the White House in ‘24. If you think about the outrage over the last SC fight from conservatives, and then think about how much more important Trump is to the party and the almost cult like following he has, you start to get a sense of how this will be received. So if you’re going to do it, taking this fight on over some documents laying around is a bridge too far for me, even if legally he was wrong. but again, if this is a larger investigation that includes the election interference, which most Americans agree was wrong, it’s a much easier sell. Jmo.
If you believe the narrative that all these ex appointees and hires are all against him there is no other conclusion that Trump had the worst employee/appointee vetting process in the history of civilization.
Criminal codes, which carry jail time, can be used to prosecute anyone who “willfully injures or commits any depredation against any property of the United States” and anyone who “willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates or destroys” government documents. Samuel R. Berger, a national security adviser to President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2015 to a misdemeanor charge for removing classified material from a government archive. In 2007, Donald Keyser, an Asia expert and former senior State Department official, was sentenced to prison after he confessed to keeping more than 3,000 sensitive documents — ranging from the classified to the top secret — in his basement. In 1999, the C.I.A. announced it had suspended the security clearance of its former director, John M. Deutch, after concluding that he had improperly handled national secrets on a desktop computer at his home. In January of this year, the archives retrieved 15 boxes that Mr. Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago from the White House residence when his term ended. The boxes included material subject to the Presidential Records Act, which requires that all documents and records pertaining to official business be turned over to the archives.
What does restricting PUBLIC access have to do with whether a POTUS can take official records with them when they moves home? Apples and oranges. And I’ll wait here while you find Trump’s letter restricting PUBLIC (not DOJ with warrant, which is what happened yesterday) access. I’m sure it’s written in thick sharpie so it should be easy for you to find.
So this article from Feb 7th 2022 says the already retrieved the 15 boxes? So what else did he have? The National Archives and Records Administration last month retrieved 15 boxes of White House records that had been sent to former President Donald Trump’s resort-home Mar-a-Lago instead of the National Archives as required by law, the agency said Monday. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/nat...mp-white-house-documents-from-mar-a-lago.html
As I said, “it depends on the documents”. I rather doubt even if Trump took stuff that should have been archived, anyone at DOJ would have persued and signed off on a search warrant. You said it yourself, they almost always want documents from former Presidents (typically a back and forth between a Presidential Library/foundation and National Archives), they don’t typically go the search warrant route. That leads me to conclude the documents themselves were not “typical”.
It appears the evidence she has of that is that he filed 2 sealed search warrants on 8/5. I hope they fire her if she is wrong (coaching search aficionados would note she is currently plane tracking on Twitter as well and has outright taken an opinion, which doesn't seem like something an actual journalist should be doing if it was her job to dig up facts).
Look to say that there is no politics at play would likely be naive, and as much as I hate Trump we cant ignore that as an ends to justify means. Hopefully whatever this is ends up on the up and up and brings him down or exonerates him in this matter.
Obviously we're not privy to what the DOJ was looking for. If only trump would release the search warrant and clear all this confusion up. He could have made copies of the material illegally. Documents could have been missing from the boxes. They could be looking for evidence he shared or sold the documents illegally. We just don't know yet.
Rick, there is absolutely no way that you can possibly know that. Are you just taking his word like we all originally did for the half built wall and the never replaced ACA?
Ask Trump, he claimed there was nothing else. I tend to think the DOJ must have known about some specific records Trump took that was not returned with these 15 boxes. I would also speculate it wasn’t a souvenir like the lunch menu from a meeting with Putin. I just don’t see Garland signing off unless there were some more serious national security type documents missing, but what those could be are anyone’s guess (I might have also thought it could have been 1/6 related, has that been ruled out?).
He stumbled upon a useful idiot who questions the legitimacy of anything and everything that doesn't agree with his distorted reality. The power that this carnival barker has to convince his followers that up is down because he says so is beyond reason. Beating Hillary, getting a Putin fan (likely compromised during exploits in Moscow) elected, and then creating serious doubt about elections in US (with no proof) is the perfect trifecta for Putin. For reference Why Putin hates Hillary
