Trump to be indicted - again.
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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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Put that first figure at 30-40%.
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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.
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A large portion of the country thinks the Russia hoax was a political act. The prosecution of Manafort under the Logan Act, while Kerry scampered the globe breaking the Act repeatedly. The process crime of Flynn, based on a criminal act that never existed. A good many feel that the 2020 election was rigged, either through overt actions such as ballot harvesting and lack of voter ID or through covert actions such as miscounting, ballot stuffing or computer manipulation. Many remember the FBI raiding an old man's house in the wee hours of the morning, while CNN cameras took in all the action. A lot of people look at the total inaction of the DOJ concerning the BLM riots and look at the resources committed to investigating Jan 6, and the zeal of federal prosecutors to lock up people for years over trespassing and interference with an official proceeding.
And a lot of people remember the two impeachment trials of Trump. Pure politics, one based on a pure lie and the other based on something that happens continually in politics. Something that Biden had done overtly when VP, and then bragged about. Pure political theater, orchestrated by The Swamp.
A lot of people still shake their heads at the raid at Trump's residence, while Biden has classified documents sitting in a garage, or in a warehouse or in a papers collection somewhere else.
Not to mention a political prosecution in NYC, that is based upon the flimsiest of evidence. Charges that would never have been brought if the defendant's name was not Trump.
Now somebody tell me, when the public has seen how Obama, Hillary Clinton and Biden have been treated by The Swamp, that a significant portion does not believe in The Deep State, the political weaponization of the FBI and the Justice Department, and unequal treatment under the law based on political affiliation?
You'd have to be a political partisan or fucking nuts not to see what is happening.
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The National Archives weighs in on the Presidential Records Act:
"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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@George-K said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
The National Archives weighs in on the Presidential Records Act:
The Swamp speaks...
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
The Dersh weighs in. His take: for this to stand it needs to be a very, very strong case. But it looks weak, especially in light of other potential violations that have gone unindicted.
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Paul Sperry:
Sources say Special Counsel Smith does not actually have the supposed "smoking gun" doc Trump is heard on an audio talking about, which means he cannot prove it is classified and thus prove Trump knew it was classified. Prosecutors have no real evidence to show jurors.
Special Counsel Smith's indictment alleges Trump showed off a military paper that he boasted was classified "highly confidential" and "secret," but the transcript reveals Trump actually said: "like, highly confidential" and "a secret." Smith omitted the words "like" and "a."
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If true, it makes the legal case more difficult for the DOJ.
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They don't want to convict him. They just want to keep him out of the White House.
Fear.
FEAR.
FEAR!
As I've written, to give this debacle a smidgen of fig leaf, Hunter will be indicted soon. It only took how many years?
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
They don't want to convict him. They just want to keep him out of the White House.
Fear.
FEAR.
FEAR!
As I've written, to give this debacle a smidgen of fig leaf, Hunter will be indicted soon. It only took how many years?
I disagree. They want him to win the nomination.
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@Jolly said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
@George-K said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
The National Archives weighs in on the Presidential Records Act:
The Swamp speaks...
??? Are you saying that the National Archive is part of this so-called "swamp"?
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@Jon said in Trump to be indicted - again.:
That’s a lot of sleight of hand on McCarthys part
Today he addresses what I think @Jon was talking about:
Is the former president being unfairly singled out for prosecution by special counsel Jack Smith’s 37-count indictment? I think so . . . but not for the reasons Trump and his devotees posit.
The problem is not that Democrats, who are leveraging the government’s law-enforcement power for partisan advantage, are going after him, even though Democrats and Beltway big shots — Hillary Clinton, Sandy Berger, David Petraeus, and (soon) Joe Biden — get a pass. The problem is that Clinton, Berger, Petraeus, and (soon) Biden get a pass.
It’s not that Trump is owed a pass. It’s that every official who is entrusted with access to the nation’s secrets, and who then betrays that trust by willful law violations and cover-ups, should be prosecuted. Every . . . single . . . one.
And none of them has any business near power.
The lesson of the Hillary Clinton precedent is that Joe Biden should be investigated and prosecuted. That’s how the scales of justice are evened out. The fix for a two-tiered justice system is not equal injustice under the law.
As for Trump, say what you want about Democrats being out to destroy him. I know all about that — wrote a book about it, in fact. But if Trump ends up being destroyed in this case, it will be based on the accounts of people who had his best interests at heart.
I don’t believe that Trump’s lawyers, who were trying to help him, would testify — as they have very reluctantly testified — that he tried to get them to destroy evidence and obstruct justice, unless he really did try to get them to destroy evidence and obstruct justice.
If you tell me I need to look the other way on that because Hillary Clinton got a pass, I respectfully suggest that you’ve lost your way.
