Trump indicted in classified documents case in Florida

To the surprise of almost no one, neither the ODNI nor the DOJ were able to find records that Trump had a standing order to declassify anything he removed from the Oval Office.

Source

a reply to: Threadbare
And?
Both were crapped on by Durham.

The government not finding something does not mean it does not exist.

a reply to: Threadbare

So, they have no letter but everyone one of them knows he can as President. They even say he can declassify at will, like, with his big brain....lol...what f'n idiots. I hope they are all paid well at least.

Link

While US presidents can declassify any document at will, former intelligence officials have said that such a “standing order” would have to be memorialized in writing and shared with the intelligence community, specifically the Office of Director of National Intelligence, as well as the agency that classified the document in the first place.

The above statement reads like a lot of your posts.

a reply to: matafuchs

If Trump dropped out of the race, his legal troubles would vanish.

a reply to: matafuchs

Actual photograph of him declassifying with his big brain...

a reply to: matafuchs

If the POTUS can declassify at will, then they cannot imply restrictions of any kind. He either can or he can't. They cannot show me where it says he can't...and they cannot show me how declassification happens if he can't.

Also, nobody can show me what a POTUS will do if an immediate release of classified to one of our allies needs doing and he can't get anybody up to ask for their permission!

Cracks me up that because they hate Trump, mentally, they never LET him be POTUS and they still aren't. A bunch of toddlers.

a reply to: WeDemBoyz

Make a joke, but a POTUS needs nobody else's permission, nor does he need to follow any kind of procedure and wait for it to complete.

The real investigation should be into those in the intel community that withheld information from a sitting president. I don't care if it is Jimmy Carter, he is president.

From His first PDB's to them not giving him information leading up to 1/6. They are all complicit and the only way for them to look guilty is keep Trump wrapped up in litigation. Problem is no one really cares.

There fear of him is hysterical.

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: matafuchs

If Trump dropped out of the race, his legal troubles would vanish.

Bold assertion based on no evidence whatsoever.

Let's even give your conspiracy hypothesis the benefit of the doubt, wouldn't it look really suspicious if all these different investigations and prosecutions of Trump were dropped just after he dropped out of the race? And wouldn't it make all the AG's and prosecutors look ridiculous as hell besides for spending all the money and resources on investigating Trump, and just dropping them all of a sudden. Never mind the castigation of prosecutors by the judges involved in the cases so far, and the diminishment of the prosecutors' reputations. Your hypothesis doesn't make sense.

I, on the other hand, assume they'll go forward whatever he does politically speaking.

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: WeDemBoyz

Make a joke, but a POTUS needs nobody else's permission, nor does he need to follow any kind of procedure and wait for it to complete.

Apparently that's just another of trumps lies.

www.bloomberg.com...

This just in:

Trump 2024 aide who allegedly saw classified map works for China lobbying firm

A top Trump campaign adviser — who apparently was shown classified documents by the former president — has a top post at a lobbying firm serving Chinese entities that potentially pose a national security threat and help Beijing commit human rights abuses.

Susie Wiles works on Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign and is co-chair of Mercury Public Affairs, which has taken millions of dollars in recent years from Chinese companies such as Yealink, Hikvision and Alibaba.

Wiles, a veteran of several GOP campaigns including Ron DeSantis’ 2018 run for Florida governor, has also been identified as one of several people to whom the 45th president allegedly revealed sensitive material, ABC News reported late Wednesday.

According to a 37-count indictment brought earlier this month by Special Counsel Jack Smith, a “PAC representative” — reportedly Wiles — visited the 77-year-old ex-president at his Bedminster, NJ, golf club in August or September 2021 and was improperly shown a classified map of a foreign nation.

The telecommunications company Yealink, whose products were flagged for security issues, reportedly paid Mercury $240,000 in 2022, according to lobbying disclosures.

In September 2021, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) wrote a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo noting a security analytics company found Yealink phones contained software to secretly record calls and track web browsing on local networks.

That data can then be transferred back to administrators in China, where companies must comply with any government requests to hand over information related to national security.

Mercury did not terminate its business with Yealink until May 2023.

The lobbying firm also had the US subsidiary of Hikvision as one of its largest foreign clients last year, raking in more than $1.7 million, according to the money-in-politics tracker OpenSecrets.

Hikvision makes video surveillance equipment for the Chinese government, some of which have been used to locate and detain Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, Axios reported in April.

The MAGA crowd like to go on about how Hunter Biden had access to classified documents through his daddy, and his connection to Chinese businesses, so no doubt the same MAGA people will be very troubled by this news report of ties between the Trump campaign and Chinese companies... And if not, what does that tell us?

a reply to: MrInquisitive

So what? They don't seem to care that all these indictments look mighty suspicious as they came since he announced, do they?

There would no longer be an upside to persecuting him. If he negotiated a stepdown, and they went on and said 'no', then it would also look petty and election rigging.

They painted themselves into such a stupid corner.

a reply to: olaru12

Sorry, paywall.

DoJ saying, well we don't find a standing order, doesn't mean beans when one isn't needed.

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: MrInquisitive

So what? They don't seem to care that all these indictments look mighty suspicious as they came since he announced, do they?

There would no longer be an upside to persecuting him. If he negotiated a stepdown, and they went on and said 'no', then it would also look petty and election rigging.

They painted themselves into such a stupid corner.

Uh, they've been investigating for a while, long before Trump announced, and the NYC indictments from Alvin Bragg came before he announced. He also announced earlier than anyone else, and I believe earlier than has been done previously. What difference would it have made if he had been indicted before announcing? You and others would just say that they made the indictments hastily before he announced and label that as suspicious. In other words, whatever the DOJ does, the MAGA crowd and allies will say the timing is suspicious and the government is totally corrupt (never mind that Trump was part of the government, and that GOP congress members are also part of the government). Also, I don't want the DOJ to be making any indictments until they have crossed their t's and dotted their i's. Hasty indictments don't tend to make for winning cases.

Moreover, the fact that it has taken the DOJ this long to bring any indictments just shows how much it has slow-walked these investigations from the start. Information provided by the House Committee on the Jan.6 riot seems to be what shamed the DOJ into finally investigating Trump. The long delay in taking any real action against Trump in this and the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal has been brought up multiple times already. I know that I have provided the time lines at least twice. If anything, this shows that Trump has been given more deference than his fellow citizens who have already faced justice for their Jan. 6 actions, or who face near-immediate arraignment over holding classified documents.

Trump defenders like to make so much of the timing of things, yet they seem to conveniently forget that the wheels of justice spin slowly, and that there are only so many days in a year, so sometimes events occur near to each other.

More indictments are coming, both from the Jan. 6 investigation and the Georgia fake elector scandal, and now it appears that the Mar-a-Lago documents grand jury is hearing more testimony and possibly seeing more evidence, so there may be additional indictments in that case as well. So more indictments after his announcement. BFD.

And why do you say if he removed himself from the race there would be no upside to prosecuting him? Upholding the rule of law and making former politicians face accountability is all upside as far as I am concerned. This country started going down this slippery slope of non-accountability for the president when Nixon was pardoned, and then Reagan and Bush II were let off the hook for their lies and crimes (here I am talking about more than Clinton's intern sex scandal, matters involving national security and the breaking of laws).

The AG's and investigators have painted themselves into such a stupid corner you say. That's not what legal experts, including even Dershowitz and Lustig, are saying.

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: olaru12

Sorry, paywall.

DoJ saying, well we don't find a standing order, doesn't mean beans when one isn't needed.

Here's what I could get of it:

A “standing order” that former President Donald Trump has claimed authorized him to instantly declassify documents removed from the Oval Office could not be found by either the Justice Department or Office of Director of National Intelligence.

The disclosure by the agencies was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last August by Bloomberg News, which sued ODNI and the Justice Department’s national security division for a copy of Trump’s so-called standing order — if one existed.

a reply to: MrInquisitive

And in all those crooked POTUS you mention, Trump is the only one to ever be indicted. We also have not seen the same kind of zeal from the DoJ with the Biden family. Not nearly.

Current DoJ is crooked as a dogs hind leg. And half the country believes there are two sets of rules. That's not a good position to be in.

a reply to: MrInquisitive

Apparently it was verbal. Got a source that says in what form it has to be, and what the process would have been had he done it 'correctly'?

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: WeDemBoyz

Make a joke, but a POTUS needs nobody else's permission, nor does he need to follow any kind of procedure and wait for it to complete.

There are those who still think the President (Trump, Biden, Clinton, etc..) needs to go to their employees and ask for permission to declassify U.S. documents.

There is no legal process for a President to follow in declassifying a document(s), and nobody's approval is needed.

This notice along can cover a lot of what was taken to Mar-a-Largo: trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov... /

Note: Our corrupt DOJ-FBI did NOT mention the above declassification order when they got their fellow corrupt judge to authorize the raid on former President Trump's Florida home.

a reply to: carewemust

I wish I had a dollar for everytime I've posted that same link somewhere on a board.

I actually had one person argue with me that it was a Trump Whitehouse source so it wasn't reliable!

What can you do with something like that?

originally posted by: carewemust

originally posted by: CoyoteAngels
a reply to: WeDemBoyz

Make a joke, but a POTUS needs nobody else's permission, nor does he need to follow any kind of procedure and wait for it to complete.

There are those who still think the President (Trump, Biden, Clinton, etc..) needs to go to their employees and ask for permission to declassify U.S. documents.

There is no legal process for a President to follow in declassifying a document(s), and nobody's approval is needed.

This notice along can cover a lot of what was taken to Mar-a-Largo: trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov... /

Note: Our corrupt DOJ-FBI did NOT mention the above declassification order when they got their fellow corrupt judge to authorize the raid on former President Trump's Florida home.

Oh, now the judges are corrupt too, evidently including those appointed by Trump. And that notice you linked to only has to do with CFH documents. As far as I know, he hasn't been charged yet for having those. He's been charged for documents involving US national security, including nuclear secrets (which he cannot declassify on his own in any case), contingency war plans, and likely other matter as well. The indictment is for 31 documents, yet he reportedly had over 100 documents marked classified. Moreover, even the declassified CFH documents were not to remain in his hands.

Why does it matter whether Trump actually declassified the documents in question?
It doesn’t! The legal issue currently before the courts is whether Department of Justice officials can be barred from reviewing the seized documents and using them in their criminal investigation until a special master can determine whether some of them are Trump’s private papers that must be returned to him. The district court judge issued such a prohibition, but a three-judge panel (including two Trump appointees) of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed her ruling as it applied to 100 documents with classification markings. As the appeals court recognized, the executive order allows original classification authorities to classify information only if it “is owned by, produced by or for, or is under the control of the United States Government.” By definition, that is government information — not private papers. Subsequent declassification does not change the information’s origins.

Nor does the classification status of the documents affect Trump’s criminal liability. The Department of Justice has publicly cited three criminal statutes that might apply in this investigation. None of them require that the information be classified. The most serious charge, the Espionage Act, criminalizes mishandling of information “relating to the national defense.” Generally, judges consider classification to be strong evidence that information relates to the national defense. But unclassified or declassified information can still qualify — particularly when the declassification happened entirely outside the usual process, involving no consultation with the relevant agencies about the national security implications of removing protections.

So much for that old chestnut of yours about Trump's declassification memo. I've pointed this out to you and others multiple times, but you clearly don't get it or just ignore the fact of the matter.

And you're wrong about the president not having to tell anyone else about declassifying information:

One thing the president cannot do, though, is declassify information “by thinking about it” — i.e., without communicating that decision to anyone else. This conclusion follows not from any particular legal requirements but rather from the very essence of what it means to classify or declassify information. As noted above, these are two-step processes: first, an official determines whether the information requires protection, and second, the information is flagged to ensure that the protections are applied or removed. If an official claims to have classified or declassified information after taking the first step but not the second, it’s like a customer saying she ordered food at a restaurant when she has decided what she wants to eat but hasn’t told the waiter.

Government Classification and the Mar-a-Lago Documents

I've posted this link and these excerpts from it multiple times, so cry me a river about reposting links.