Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcranmer | Hacker News Reader

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> Which FBI raided the home of a former (Republican) President over nonsense weeks before a midterm election, after which we learned the sitting (Democrat) President was caught red-handed committing the same offense?

The two cases are not the same. In the former case, the individual in question refused on multiple instances to return classified information when asked, and even after a search warrant, filed a lawsuit to demand the classified information back--and the lawsuit manages to somehow be even poor quality than your average pro se lawsuit [1]. In the latter case, the individual in question self-identified the classified information, returned it immediately, and has been cooperating to the fullest extent to retrieve it. But totally the same right?

> Who worked directly with Twitter to censor actual subject matter experts on COVID and virology, embedding "former" FBI and CIA staff as Twitter employees?

That was started during Trump's administration, just so you're aware. All of the dates in your own source document are in 2020, when Trump was still president.

[1] One of the more galling parts is that the lawsuit filed didn't cite any coherent basis as to which laws/procedures form the basis of the claim--the cover sheet literally checked "other (please specify)" without specifying, because there was no basis that could apply.

>In the former case, the individual in question refused on multiple instances to return classified information when asked, and even after a search warrant, filed a lawsuit to demand the classified information back

You are selectively leaving out the part where Trump claims he declassified the documents. If he did, then the raid was unquestionably wrong.

> You are selectively leaving out the part where Trump claims he declassified the documents

That’s immaterial. Neither the crimes that DOJ has identified as potentially at issue nor the terms of the grand jury subpoena with which Trump’s noncomploance motivated the application for the search warrant turn on the classification status of the documents.

> If he did, then the raid was unquestionably wrong.

No, as long as the documents had classification markings, both the seizure in the raid and the raid itself, premised on seeking evidence of, inter alia, Trump’s noncompliance with the grand jury subpoena calling for production of all documents he had at MAL with classification markings, was clearly not only justified by the evidence available to DOJ when they applied for the warrant, but also based on suspicions proven out by the results.

It is material since this whole thing started well before Trump's noncompliance. Trump allowed the NARA to retrieve 15 boxes in January. He was also told to put an extra lock on the room with the documents. Clearly the government knew he still had documents and didn't care. Then suddenly a short time before the election they raid his house?

It feels like malicious prosecution. Why aren't they trying to take back the documents we know Obama still has? As far as I can tell they have never even ask Obama for his documents back? Why not?

There are other presidents as well who had documents for decades like Nixon. Surely taking back documents from a guy who did what Nixon did would be justifiable? But no, only Trump gets treated this way.

My point is not that Trump didn't do anything wrong. Only that other presidents have not been required to turn over a huge amount of documents. Why should Trump be any different? Either we should enforce whatever rules there may be on all the politicians or none of them.

If the FBI goes and searches Obama's house, takes a bunch of his stuff including things that is not related and doesn't document they took it, then I won't have an issue with the Trump raid. Until that happens I don't believe the FBI is acting in good faith. They have already shown they lied about this whole thing by taking his passport and lying about it.

> It is material since this whole thing started well before Trump's noncompliance.

If by this whole thing you mean Trump's conduct which is the subject of the criminal grand jury investigation which produced the subpoenas with which he failed to comply, resulting in the search warrant, yes, the conduct started before the investigation of the conduct. That’s... rather normal.

> He was also told to put an extra lock on the room with the documents. Clearly the government knew he still had documents and didn't care.

Clearly, the fact that they asked for risk mitigation until documents could be recovered demonstrated that they did care.

> Why aren't they trying to take back the documents we know Obama still has?

You mean, the ones the National Archives has that pro-Trump propagandists keep lying about to create false equivalencies, forcing NARA to put out statements reiterating that they, not Obama (or, as similar false claims have been made about, other former Presidents) have control of them? [0] [1]

> There are other presidents as well who had documents for decades like Nixon.

Nixon Administration (1969-1974) records were not subject to the Presidential Records Act of 1978 for... reasons which should be fairly obvious.

In fact, the PRA was passed largely because of things Nixon did which there was no law in place to control, and which lawmakers didn't want to see repeated, so they put a law in place.

> My point is not that Trump didn't do anything wrong. Only that other presidents have not been required to turn over a huge amount of documents.

Because they didn't steal huge quantities of government documents in the first place, despite lies Trump's defenders keep telling and NARA keeps refuting, where Presidential library records held by NARA from former Administrations are falsely presented as being privately held by ex-Presidents in order to present a false “everyone else did it, too” narrative to minimize Trump’s wrongdoing.

> Why should Trump be any different?

Because he actually stole a bunch of government documents.

[0] https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2022/nr22-001#...

[1] https://www.archives.gov/press/press-releases/2022/nr22-001#...

>If by this whole thing you mean Trump's conduct which is the subject of the criminal grand jury investigation which produced the subpoenas with which he failed to comply, resulting in the search warrant, yes, the conduct started before the investigation of the conduct. That’s... rather normal.

That is not what I mean. I mean they went to his house, took documents then later came back for the raid. Why didn't they take all the documents at the beginning?

>Clearly, the fact that they asked for risk mitigation until documents could be recovered demonstrated that they did care.

They could have taken them when they took the other documents or could have not waited months to come back and get them. It makes no sense that they would wait months if they thought there was any harm in Trump having the documents.

>Nixon Administration (1969-1974) records were not subject to the Presidential Records Act of 1978 for... reasons which should be fairly obvious.

You are correct. I knew Nixon had documents but forgot the law was created after him

>Because they didn't steal huge quantities of government documents in the first place, despite lies Trump's defenders keep telling and NARA keeps refuting, where Presidential library records held by NARA from former Administrations are falsely presented as being privately held by ex-Presidents in order to present a false “everyone else did it, too” narrative to minimize Trump’s wrongdoing

You are correct. I haven't kept up with topic.

>Because he actually stole a bunch of government documents.

So did Biden which is clearly what this whole comparison was about. I made a few poor comparisons with past presidents, but Biden's situation does seem quite similar. Which interestingly enough you didn't respond to.

> I mean they went to his house, took documents then later came back for the raid. Why didn’t they take all the documents at the beginning?

They didn’t “take” anything before the warrant. Trump hand over documents before the subpoena, he handed over documents in response to the subpoena, he certified that he had handed over all responsive documents after handing over documents in response to the subpoena, and then, when the government found evidence that that declaration was false, they got a search warrant.

> They could have taken them when they took the other documents

No, they couldn’t, because Trump didn’t produce them when he turned over the other documents. They couldn’t search for and seize documents that weren’t being handed over voluntarily without the authority to do so, authority which comes through a search warrant.

> So did Biden

There is a special counsel investigating the Biden case (and one was appointed almost immediately), its far less clear (because these matters don’t tend to leak before resolved or charged, unless the target makes a huge public deal out of them by making extravagant social media claims and filing bizarro lawsuits to attempt to retain custody of the government documents) whether or not there was any either deliberate wrongdoing to knowing misrepresentation after the fact in the Biden case. But the idea that the law is not being enforced is based on, AFAICT, shear fantasy.

There are certain procedures that need to be followed to declassify documents which Trump definitely did not follow.

Also, I've read the legal briefings. Trump doesn't actually claim that he declassified the documents, only that he may have declassified them. And when pressed to clarify whether or not he was arguing that he declassified them, he complained that it was unfair to demand that he take a position on that matter. (Also, Trump never offered the declassification argument until well after the search warrant was executed, and not at any of the other several times when he was asked to return classified information.)

(And to be fair, Trump has been unfairly treated--if anyone else had SCI information in their personal residence, they would be arguing these points of law from jail awaiting their trial. That he has yet to be charged with any crime is a sign of how unequitable his treatment has been.)

>There are certain procedures that need to be followed to declassify documents which Trump definitely did not follow.

There is debate if a president needs to follow any specific procedure.

>Also, I've read the legal briefings. Trump doesn't actually claim that he declassified the documents, only that he may have declassified them.

Ok?

>And when pressed to clarify whether or not he was arguing that he declassified them, he complained that it was unfair to demand that he take a position on that matter.

I don't think he needs to take a public position. If there is a trial he can take whichever position he wants then.

>(Also, Trump never offered the declassification argument until well after the search warrant was executed, and not at any of the other several times when he was asked to return classified information.)

We don't know that. We only know he publicly didn't make the argument until after the search warrant.

>(And to be fair, Trump has been unfairly treated--if anyone else had SCI information in their personal residence, they would be arguing these points of law from jail awaiting their trial. That he has yet to be charged with any crime is a sign of how unequitable his treatment has been.)

Biden, Obama, Nixon and quite possibly all sorts of other politicians have all done the same and aren't in jail. I think you mean if he was a pleb he would be in jail, which is probably correct. The problem is, this whole thing was a comparison with Biden, who isn't in jail...

Ipse dixit

Are you saying I am making and assertion without proof or that Trump did?

>That was started during Trump's administration, just so you're aware. All of the dates in your own source document are in 2020, when Trump was still president.

The whole argument of "reactionary conservatives" is that these agencies operate according to their own agenda, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office. According to this argument, if the President's agenda aligns with that of career civil servants, they cooperate. If not, rogue civil servants a.k.a. the "Deep State" will make their own decisions, take their own actions, and define their own administrative policies under the concealment of secrecy laws and White House inattention. It doesn't help when the New York Times publishes op-eds like this one, while at the same time browbeating those who believe in the Deep State "conspiracy theory:"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Part_of_the_Resistance_In...

I don't fully buy into the Deep State argument. That said, at least a few non-political employees at FBI, CIA, etc. have been caught expressing strong partisan sentiment in their official capacity. In my personal judgement and experience, college-educated upper middle-class Americans (i.e. agency employees in leadership roles) tend to be more susceptible to the sort of media bubble that might compel one to break the law, lie to the public, risk institutional trust, and so on if that's what it takes to "save democracy." Whether democracy is/was actually at risk, or whether the scale of the risk justified burning the FBI, CIA, IRS, DOJ, etc.'s institutional credibility, is another matter.

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