Biden willfully kept classified docs but won’t be charged

In all honesty Biden would not be my first choice. That being said Trump cannot be taken out of the discussion. He will almost certainly be the Republican nominee and he is just as cognitively diminished as Joe Biden and additionally is the poster boy for narcissistic personality disorder and unlike Biden who does listen to his advisors Trump thinks that he knows everything about everything and unlike his first term if Trump were to serve a second term he will be sure to appoint absolute sycophants in every cabinet, subcabinet or senior staff position. Biden's cognitive shortcomings could be an issue if he were running against Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis, a politician who I absolutely despise. Instead Old Joe is running against a guy who has confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, still thinks that Obama is the president, and one more than one occasion has confused Turkey with Hungary.

 

The focus is on the Afghanistan TS/SCI info and the ability to get a conviction. That paragraph was needed for the SC to justify not recommending charges against Biden for having TS/SCI documents about Afghanistan in his house after he left office. The SC does a very good job of laying out that Biden would be use to having TS/SCI information in his home after 8 years of being VPOTUS. For any non-Principal, this is a very, very big Red Flashing light of "Oh Crap, I need to call the office and self report this." Biden did not notify anyone or turn the documents back in. That shows a willful act but the SC does not recommend prosecution. The SC goes through several defenses of why the evidence would be difficult to gain a conviction and almost all of them relate to Biden's past memory issues, his issues with recall during their interviews, and his future mental state, and says it will be difficult to prove his state of mind in a court of law.

The Notebooks are a much thornier issue, since it is extremely unlikely that they were properly labeled with classification markings. This gets into derivative classification markings, which are very involved. Principals outside of the IC are extremely unlikely to do them in their personal notebooks, since they are consumers, not producers. So then the SC has to prove that Biden knew all the info was classified when it was not properly marked, which again goes to mental state and is hard to prove.

 

Two things can be true at once.

The report is certainly a bad look for Biden, but also designed to make him appear even worse and released on a day to distract us from the former President being before SCOTUS for fomenting insurrection.

We can cheer our teams as much as we want but yesterday was just a shitty day for America.

 

Plus the fact that Reagan kept similar notebooks after his 8 years in office and didn't face any consequences.

 

Both our options at President suck. I'll be voting 3rd party or just skipping that part while voting for the 3rd straight election.

 

Not quite accurate. The documents labeled TS/SCI on Afghanistan and the Notebook are two separate issues. Reagan would help out with the Notebooks but not the TS/SCI documents. The TS/SCI documents is probably the stronger case and the reason the SC had to bring up Biden's mental state as a reason not to prosecute.

 

I was just referring to the notebook part.

 

Yet he is still a better choice than who the pubs are offering. This would be an easy pub win if they would nominate anyone outside of the MAGA cult. Trump cult = loser.

 

I'm pretty skeptical that his memory issues are the true reason for not pursuing charges.

I think the real reason is general latitude given to a former president/vice president. I don't believe Trump would have been charged either had he just given the documents back, even if he knowingly and willingly took classified documents off the white house premises. He just forced the DOJ's hand by refusing to return them.

If the situation had been the same with Biden, and there was evidence that the national archives (or FBI) requested the docs and he refused to return them, then he'd have been charged just the same.

 

I'm kind of surprised that Trump could consistently get confused about the leader of Turkey. I mean it was immediately after a phone call with Erdogan (who knows what the hell they discussed or what Erdogan had on him) that Trump summarily ordered our troops out of Syria. Just like that, no warning to anyone. Our Kurdish allies there? Left them to the slaughter. Just one glimpse of what a second Trump presidency will be like. (As for the leader of Hungary, why is he on Trump's mind? Just one more person who has something on him?)

 

Do you honestly think he's a "well meaning old man"? Really? I certainly don't think Trump is "well meaning" but I also don't think for a second he is a "rapist" or a "racist". He's been torn apart by the liberal American media and been subject to the kangaroo courts of New York and the Atlanta. You think Biden could get a fair trail in Arkansas or Alabama? Not likely.

 

Oh they will be studying our time alright... but it will be about the downfall of Democracy due to a bunch of dumbshits who thought a guy who sheets on a golden toilet and stiffs his contractors "speaks for the common man".

 

Your skepticism is warranted. It's not a close call. This was a political hack job, intended to rile the hateful idiots in.

How one appears to a jury is never a stated consideration in reported charging decisions. That was purely gratuitous, political, intended to serve a non-legal purposes and persuade people stupid enough that it mattered. The specific intent standard established by decades of case law requires very specific intent to conceal and deprive the United States or share with unauthorized. Think, Sandy Berger stuffing his socks, David Petreaus sharing with his mistress (and trying to conceal), Donald Trump getting responses to the Archives fabricated and moving boxes ahead of a search.

If the hack had filed charges, it likely would have never gotten to a trial. None of these facts come close to the form of specific intent necessary to sustain a prosecution, and it likely would have been dismissed before trial, although my knowledge f criminal procedure is very limited. Certainly in the civil equivalent, it would never survive summary judgment, or even a Motion to Dismiss under ultimate facts.

Marcy goes into more of why it was dishonest (a/k/a) partisan hack job divorced from legal accuracy. This is not a close call for honest people

Robert Hur's Box-Checking - emptywheel

 

Well, Well, Well...... It appears the classified documents issues that we have been told over and over by this boar's left is like apples and oranges is a little closer to the same thing as we all have been saying. The difference is the fact Trump kept them and didn't want to return them. I also believe a bunch of us have been leaning on the side of Biden's cognitive decline and over and over you guys have tried to cover for him. Not remembering some things and stating I do not recall is one thing, but not remembering when you were VP about 10 years ago is another. But carry on with your defense of his cognitive decline. It's a shame that the power Jill has as the first lady is more important to her than the health of her husband.

 

Yah we need 2 new SSD men!!

 

That's a pretty incredibly astronomical difference though. I don't think most of us knew how common it seems that these classified documents end up going home with politicians. That should be handled accordingly. But as far as we know only one politican has refused to return them, and some are still missing.

 

Refused is a strong word, I would say more delay and was actually negotiating with them to return them. I am also not sure how we would know if all of Trumps have been returned, just do we know if all of Biden's have been returned. It appears there must not be a record of any of these guys signing them out or whatever happens, because Joe had some from when he was Senator as well as VP, so a minimum of 5 plus years before it came to light. System is in bad need of a makeover!!

 

This is just gonna move up the Michelle Obama announcement

 

Refused is the correct word. What kind of negotiating tactic is lying on an affidavit saying all the docs were returned? Or ignoring subpoenas and telling lawyers to lie for you?

And we can say with 99% certainty that all Biden's docs were returned. He allowed the Feds unfettered access to his home and office. Can you say that about Trump?

 

I would go one step further with Trump. Not only did he refuse to provide the documents when requested and then have his attorneys lie on his behalf, when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago pursuant to a valid search warrant signed by a federal judge based on a showing of probable cause Trump called the search a raid although he was notified in advance and then claimed that he was a victim. Reminds me of the commonly used example of chutzpah, the man who murders his parents and asks for mercy because he is an orphan.