Lock him up! CNN reports Trump to be indicted

What's more likely to have top secret Intel that could be damaging to national security?

There are generally 4 levels of classification. Classified, Secret, Top Secret, and Top Secret plus. A TS/SCI for example, would be Top Secret open in Secure Area only. TS/NOFORN is Top Secret: No Foreign Eyes can view.

Emails are never marked above secret level. Most that are classified are marked C only. The docs Trump stored in a stage in a MAR ballroom, a bathroom shower, and a closet off the pool? Some were marked the most classified possible.

When they investigated Hillary, the FBI found she did a good job responding to queries regarding classified intel that the discussion would have to move to a secure channel. But the email asking for information would be classified too. But how much damage is done if a person hacked Hillary's email and only saw someone asking about X, only to see Hillary's response of "Let's move the conversation."

In contrast, read the indictment against Trump. He had docs about our nuclear capabilities, other country's nuke capabilities, our potential weaknesses against foreign attacks, Iran invasion plans, and more. The question isn't which may be easier to access. It's which is more dangerous to national security?

And last, Mar-a-Lago was a magnet for spies.

 

A private e-mail server is much less secure than Mar-a-lago. It's not close.

 

Not the legal standard.

 

None of what I'm saying absolves Trump, it is only a criticism of the double standard of the Justice Department and a criticism of Hillary Clinton.

I was of the belief that even if Hillary broke the law, she shouldn't go to jail because she's the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. It would be too bad of a look for our criminal justice system. But my standard is now out the window.

Looking retroactively under this standard, both should have been indicted. And it looks like foul play now because the standards changed with somebody this DOJ and this Administration happens to hate and have a motive against.

Again that's not to say the DOJ doesn't have a ton of evidence against Trump. It looks like they do. They just also had more than enough to indict Clinton. And whether they want to admit it or not, public perception in the case of an indictment had a lot to do with that.

 

In the end, I don’t think that was correct. You are looking at a 2016 article there.

The final State Department report came out in 2019. State Dept. finds no ‘systemic’ classified violation in Hillary Clinton private-server emails

Most of the emails they concluded they “couldn’t have known” were classified at the time or were not even actually marked until after the fact. I’ve seen different numbers about which ones technically were classified, but I’m quite sure the Trump DOJ would have prosecuted if they could make a real case.

 

To be fair, my impression from the indictment is that the boxes are mostly random crap like newspapers and publicity photos, they just also had some classified documents in them.

That is, presumably, why the staffers referred to them as his “beautiful mind papers” - it’s a collection of random shit that he thinks has some significance and really, really wants to keep.

 

Good for you - seriously.

 

To me, in an ideal world, the next President pardons Trump when they take the White House and vocally discourages any indictment of high profile politicians for the transportation of migrants or the retention of classified documents.

Hopefully that puts the puts the banana republic criticisms to rest and we start over. Trump doesn't get the Presidency and politically motivated indictments (hopefully) end.

Still not a fan of this, but at some point, you have to look at Trump and say the dude dug his own grave. He has a point when he says institutions like the FBI are out to get him, but he also does himself absolutely no favors and he makes it as difficult as possible for them NOT to indict him.

 

And how secure is a dingbat showing top secret documents to total strangers?

 

You don’t actually know that. An email server can be totally secure, or wide open and insecure. No evidence Clinton’s server was breached. That doesn’t mean it definitely wasn’t.

Trump could have had a locked room. Instead he put them on stage and in a bathroom. So we can pretty safely say “not secure”.

To what extent intel was actually lost, is speculation in both cases.

 

No. But a big part of what the DOJ uses to determine whether or not to charge. It's called prosecutotial discretion. If the leaked docs have no value, the DOJ is less likely to indict. If the docs are as bad as what Trump held on to, different story.

You try to claim double standard. Then whine about the standards the DOJ has been using for decades when it comes to whom the indict and whom the don't? Fact is, the DOJ has been consistent in these cases. Cooperate fully, return all docs, and if nothing that is potentially damaging was leaked, then no charges follow. Most of Hillary's emails marked classified were done post receipt, and were marked so because her response was the conversation needed to move to something more secure. Pence? Cooperated fully and the docs he had were likely not damaging. Trump? Didn't cooperate and had highest level of docs that could be severely damaging to national security.

 

Tell you what. When President Biden gets indicted, and Democrats rush to every microphone they see to talk about the weaponization of law enforcement, then you can lecture me about adopting a “modicum” of objectivity. Until then I’m sticking with my opinion on challenging the republicans on who is the party of law and order.

 

I'm not sure what it is about the Trump administration that would make you think they took the high road with Hillary. She wasn't prosecuted because they knew they couldn't prove intent and get a conviction which would have been extremely embarrassing and given the appearance of an actual politically motivated prosecution.

 

Ridiculous.

You agree with him sharing US secrets? yes or no

Biden WON.

I want Biden v Trump bc Joe wins again

Trump is a traitor. No help from Garland or others

GOP flippers will confirm it. Going to get much worse

 

Your failure to acknowledge the vast difference in the security issues between lower level security email communications that Hillary was commended for requesting to move to a secure when it was prudent, and top level documents in an unsecure location proves you simply want to deflect. Clinton was guilty, she acknowledged it and cooperated since she knew it was low level. Trump was egregious in non-compliance, conspired to withhold, lied to DOJ.... stop trying to say it's the same.

 

Probably correct. There were the 31 national defense items (the 31 counts), i saw the number of classified documents in the 175-200 range. Obviously those boxes must contain junk as well.

Do we know how exactly how many in the empty folders are *missing* and how serious they are? That’s as big, if not bigger issue to the intelligence people, although those may not be in the indictment (because… missing). They’d probably need to figure out what happened to them to include in the charges…

 

She only needed to be "grossly negligent" in handling documents "relating to national defense." Comey seemed to believe the evidence suggested she did. He even originally used the words "gross negligence" but later revised them to "extreme carelessness" which some would argue is still "gross negligence."

The FBI just didn't want to prosecute under a "gross negligence" standard because they thought that was too broad a standard to go after a Presidential nominee. So the issue was really one of prosecutorial discretion, not whether Clinton likely violated some provision of the Espionage Act because the FBI seemed to believe she did.

 

Thank you.

At least some of you guys are honest on that count.

 

What truly sold me in the indictment is the extensive and corrupt lengths Trump took to avoid returning the documents. It is indescribable!! A former President that refuses to return obvious classified documents? After campaigning on a platform that demanded accountability for the maintenance of confidential documents?!?!

 

These defenses of Trump are glossing over the specifics of what he KNOWINGLY took and WITHHELD:

Potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.

That's the type of thing that could get a lot of American soldiers killed. You'd think there would be more concern coming from the "kneeling during the anthem is disrespectful to our military" crowd.