Trump to be indicted - again.
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@Jon said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
That’s a lot of sleight of hand on McCarthys part.
Please elaborate.
It's not McCarthy's column - it's Noah Rothman (my bad - I should have been clear). He's referencing a McCarthy column.
Note he used the passive voice in Hillary’s case “documents were destroyed”.
That's like saying "
BidenTrump didn't carry the boxes to thegaragebathroom."Phones were destroyed, and tens of thousands of emails about recipes (as though Clinton even knew where the kitchen is) and wedding plans were deleted.
McCarthy's column says:
Trump’s best selective-prosecution argument involves Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state set up an unauthorized, laughably insecure home-brew server system, which she used for years to conduct State Department business. This was a willful act: Clinton sought to defeat government record-keeping and record-disclosure requirements, including the mandate that officials conduct government business via government facilities — a mandate Clinton enforced on her subordinates as a cabinet secretary.
Because Clinton’s position was steeped in sensitive foreign-relations and national-security matters, by setting up an insecure email system, she was guaranteeing that national-defense information would be transmitted through it. Indeed, she used the system to communicate with President Obama, including from what the FBI gingerly referred to as “the territory of . . . an adversary” (which was probably Russia). The FBI found that classified information was stored in Clinton’s system, some of it designated at the highest level of sensitivity — the “Top Secret/Special Access Program” level. The bureau further acknowledged it was highly likely that Clinton’s system had been penetrated by hostile actors, including foreign intelligence operatives. When Clinton’s system came to light, she caused over 30,000 emails to be deleted and destroyed, even though a congressional subpoena had been issued for them.
The Clinton precedent is a strong basis for Trump to argue that, in fairness, he should not be charged. Nevertheless, if he is charged, it will not be a legal defense at trial — although he will surely try to use it for jury-nullification purposes. At trial, the only issue for the jury will be whether Trump committed the offenses charged against him. It will be beside the point that someone else committed analogous crimes but was not charged.
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Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
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This seems like it could be the real deal.
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Charles Cooke at NRO has a response to Rothman's article I quoted earlier:
Noah writes:
Republicans rejected the standard James Comey set in 2016, as they should have. The FBI director’s subsequent bungling of the on-again, off-again Clinton probe confirmed the wisdom of their skepticism toward the showboating FBI director. The GOP should resist the urge to ratify the Comey precedent today, now that it serves as a blunt instrument of political utility.
If Trump is found to have violated the law — not just the mishandling of classified materials, which seems only ever to be a prosecutable offense if the alleged offender is not a household name, but the allegedly deliberate misleading of investigators and obstructive conduct — he should face the consequences he himself has said should befall anyone who violates the statutes that apply to the handling of confidential materials.
The equal but opposite uneven application of justice is no remedy for the uneven application of justice. The fact that the Comey precedent, applied to Trump’s case, might exculpate him of misconduct despite the publicly available evidence suggestive of his guilt demonstrates that the FBI director abdicated his duties in 2016. Republicans were right to reject the Comey standard then. They should continue to reject it today.
I disagree with this. I think that it is entirely possible — necessary, even — to believe that James Comey got it wrong, but that, in so doing, he set a precedent that ought to apply to all who find themselves in the same situation — at least for a time. Certainly, I am not of the view that a bad precedent must stick around forever. I am, however, of the view that it is unsustainable for that bad precedent to be changed the first time that a politician of the opposite party is being considered for prosecution. If, as James Comey insisted, no reasonable prosecutor would have brought a case against Hillary Clinton, then, if and when the next case against a Republican is similar, the same rule ought to be applied. The alternative is caprice.
Is the case against Trump similar to the one against Clinton? Having now seen the indictment, I am not sure that it is. Hillary’s alleged crimes — for which she absolutely should have been prosecuted — were bad. Trump’s are worse, and the case against him is stronger. To a large extent, that is Trump’s fault. Hillary was a lawyer, and she behaved like one once her transgressions had been discovered. Trump is a narcissist, and he behaved like one after the government contacted him. Reasonable prosecutors have to make reasonable decisions, and from what I read this morning, the case against Trump is more than reasonable. Unlike Noah, I’d like the the Comey Precedent to be enforced going forward. But it doesn’t apply here.
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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I've not really being following the details of all this, but didn't President Trump pass a law in 2018 that increased the penalties for mis-handling classified information?
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Whether the breaches were equivalent is irrelevant. The failure to enforce the law in the case of HRC casts an air of illegitimacy to these proceedings now. If her violation was less fragrant and dangerous, then adjust for that in the sentencing. It’s why there’s a range. The same holds true for Biden and Burisma. If Trump did what the indictment accuses, I am all for locking him up, but this trial and the evidence given had better be fully transparent AND you have got to be fully transparent and serious about HRC and Biden.
Now you will have 25% of the country fully convinced that we are seeing a completely politicized and weaponized Justice Department simply jailing their political opponents. There’s nothing you can do about that. But there is something that can be done about the 15-20% that suspect that this is highly motivated by politics…
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@Axtremus said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
@George-K , you take the position that somehow HRC and Trump's transgressions are equivalent. What if they are not, that Comey was right about HRC then and Jack Smith is also right about Trump now?
McCarthy and Rothman take that position. My comment echoes their position. Cook, whose comments I also posted, disagrees, but does not dismiss HRC's actions.
Nevertheless, I do agree that Comey's dismissal of Clinton's transgressions was inappropriate. He dismissed them even before interviewing her. The law says nothing of "intent", but that's what he based his decision to not pursue on.
We talked about this back in 2016 - no need to re-litigate it here..
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It comes down to public trust in the mechanisms of government. The public must be able to trust that it is operating effectively, openly, and in a dispassionate and nonpolitical manner. Any breach of that trust, even if it seems innocent, has to be treated without compromise. The Comey/HRC investigation was/is the tip of the iceberg. Then you had everything that has come out over the last three years regarding the FBI, FISA Warrants, and Michael Steele. You have illegal FBI stings involving Whitmer and the ridiculous white nationalist stuff. It’s eroded the trust. We see what happened to General Flynn. We see what happened with many Trump officials and the manner of their arrests -and we see the disproportionate standards of justice being applied, and we have no trust that this is being handled correctly and properly. How could we?
This isn’t about the case right now, but the past 7 years. The public trust is gone. Hell, I bet there are people on the left that see it to, but are choosing to ignore it since it’s attacking those evil conservatives, then it’s justified.
I can and do honestly believe that Trump violated the law. I can and do believe that he should likely go to jail. But after the last 7 years I cannot trust that, or those responsible to uphold these laws.
