Apply the Hillary Clinton Rule to Donald Trump
“…we can’t rewind the clock. We can only decide how to go forward. And so the DOJ should go forward with the same rule it applied to Hillary Clinton, including the same level of deference.” - David French
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Seems to me the warrant has already been served. Yes, the FBI could say “well, we’ve set a precedent with HIlliary, so we’re going to lay off now”, but the flip side is that if indeed Trump has exposed classified information to other countries, that really ought to be (morally speaking at least) punished.
To me, that’s the sticking point, especially with Hilliary; we had the very real possibility of a President whose mishandling of classified information made it likely that foreign powers would be able to send an ambassador or letter to the Secretary of State with some of the information gleaned asking “so how would you like this to be on page 1 of the New York Times?”.
For that matter, given the number of leaders who conducted federal business on unsecured private accounts, I wonder how many times it’s happened already. Just might explain some things, IMO.
(and along those lines, one of my key points of reluctance for Trump was he’d made his fortune doing real estate in Mob-ruled Gotham…..so I had the question of whether he was such a genius that he intimidated the Mob, or whether we’d learn to our horror that he’d made some deals with them that were being called back….I don’t know that either occurred, but that was certainly a concern of mine)
All in all, my position is that we’ve got to start taking national and data security more seriously in our country. A pox on both their houses for where we are now.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
I understand French’s reasoning, I think. He seems to have two main concerns: It’s not fair to have one legal standard for Democrats and another Republicans. And it’s not good to have response to these kinds of problems constantly shifting: so, stability. But I’m not convinced that going easy on Trump because we went easy on Hillary is ultimately good moral reasoning. If you do something once, you can call it an anomaly. If you do it twice, you’re well on your way to “established custom.”
So I think Hillary got away some things and Comey and whoever was AG should have handled that more strictly. But the way forward should be to get back to taking these things seriously not to making laxness a norm. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Of course even a slap on the wrist for Trump will be completely politicized by his supporters as a persecution thing. There’s no winning that fight, so maybe just win the fight for rule of law.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
I would say there are some differences between Trump and Clinton. With that said, everyone is jumping to a conclusion on Trump. Some documents were taken. He is not listed as a defendant, not being charged with anything, may not be charged with anything, and it isn’t even clear if he himself personally is the target of the investigation. Remember it was a lawyer who signed the affidavit that nothing was present. I personally doubt that Trump will be charged with anything. I think it will be hard to prove criminal intent, because I am not sure there was any. That doesn’t mean that the government doesn’t have the right to retrieve documents that are clearly owned by them.
David, agreed, but one other fact here is that a warrant can only be issued (4th Amendment) when there is probable cause—generally this means a crime has been committed. If you have documents you need but not a crime, you issue a subpoena or court order.
So if the FBI has gotten a warrant when they knew very well that no crime had been committed or was provable, they need to be in deep trouble, and people need to “pursue other opportunities” as a result. The Constitution takes this kind of thing very seriously for a reason, that reason being the mischief that King George III did with his general warrants and the like.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
[Bert Perry]David, agreed, but one other fact here is that a warrant can only be issued (4th Amendment) when there is probable cause—generally this means a crime has been committed. If you have documents you need but not a crime, you issue a subpoena or court order.
So if the FBI has gotten a warrant when they knew very well that no crime had been committed or was provable, they need to be in deep trouble, and people need to “pursue other opportunities” as a result. The Constitution takes this kind of thing very seriously for a reason, that reason being the mischief that King George III did with his general warrants and the like.
Probably cause is a very low threshold. Time will tell on what happened. But it appeared that they had already issued multiple subpoenas. And that in July, Trumps team signed an affidavit that there were no more documents. What we are hearing is that there was pushback from his team on handing anything else over. But again time will tell. A grand jury of his peers believed that there was probable cause and the judge believed there was probable cause. (https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/11/politics/mar-a-lago-search-subpoena-late…)
My personality is not to read all type of nefarious things into something until the facts are revealed. Giving people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think Clinton was criminally trying to do anything wrong, and I don’t think that Trump is either. I think at the end of the day it is messy behaviors. Some of those behaviors have real consequences. Some of Trumps documents may have been so sensitive and being stored in essentially an open golf club where people and staff or coming and going as they please, that they may have needed to react very quickly after hearing about it. I think we should let the process go. I don’t agree with what Clinton did with her email messages, but she got it pretty bad from the DOJ, most likely costing her the election. You could read all kinds of Deep State around that, that the DOJ was trying to bring Trump to power. But in the end, it was just more sloppiness. Government can’t even get driver’s license processes correct. I think we give them more credit than they are due to pulling all kinds of things off and such. Fox News and the Republicans are all up in arms. But for what really? That the FBI searched a premise for documents and they found such documents? No one is charged with a crime, or is it even clear if a crime was even committed yet. Trump hasn’t even remotely been implicated in something (I can guarantee you that Trump didn’t pack all of those boxes and move them into hiding places at his golf club). The fact that no ex-president has been searched is meaningless. We haven’t had a president’s supporters erect gallows at the Capital building looking for the VP to hang as well. Trump’s presidency has been the first for many things, some good and some bad.
[dgszweda]My personality is not to read all type of nefarious things into something until the facts are revealed. Giving people the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think Clinton was criminally trying to do anything wrong, and I don’t think that Trump is either. … I don’t agree with what Clinton did with her email messages, but she got it pretty bad from the DOJ, most likely costing her the election.
David, on the point of Hillary’s offsite email servers …
Over the years I’ve worked various jobs to support our ministry, including security. I have a security clearance and have worked at classified facilities. The email servers and the offsite stored emails they contained were an egregious breach of security. More than that, a criminal breach. Yes, the floundering Comey may well have cost Hillary the election, but the offense was extremely serious. Someone ought to have gone to jail for it.
Hillary herself may have been clueless, perhaps an innocent bystander (if you believe that…), but many people working for were far more trained in security protocols than I am. I can’t imagine those who set up those systems for her are guiltless, and I doubt that she is herself. Of course, we’ll never know the extent because no real investigation has been completed or anyone charged, much less tried.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
[Don Johnson]Of course, we’ll never know the extent because no real investigation has been completed or anyone charged, much less tried.
I don’t defend what she did was right. Why people like Colin Powell and a long list of high ranking government officials used personal email accounts to conduct national business is perplexing to me. It was known that it was occurring (including Clinton’s situation) and yet security officials allowed it to take place. So, I for one believe it should have never been involved.
But to say that no real investigation did not take place, seems a bit off. There were 4-5 FBI investigations, Senate probes, Internal State Department Investigations, a House Select Committee, an Inspector Generals investigation…. I would argue that this was investigated quite extensively. The issue is that people didn’t like the outcomes and they felt that because the outcomes didn’t result in criminal charges, that it was not investigated enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy
The Republican Senate Committee didn’t find anything criminal took place
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-clinton/clinton-email-probe-find…
Was it stupid and should it ever have been allowed to take place? No. But was it criminal conduct that would have resulted in a criminal conviction? No.
[dgszweda]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy
The Republican Senate Committee didn’t find anything criminal took place
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-clinton/clinton-email-probe-finds…
Was it stupid and should it ever have been allowed to take place? No. But was it criminal conduct that would have resulted in a criminal conviction? No.
I don’t see in the link that the Senate Committee came to that conclusion.
It is possible with the server wiped clean that they couldn’t gather enough evidence.
All I know is that, according to my training, if I had done something similar (even on a much smaller scale) I would be in a heap of trouble.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
Dave, if I remember right, you’ve made your career in the medical industry. Imagine the FDA comes for a surprise inspection, and it’s found your company lacks a large number of required records. It’s going to be a long, long day, right?
Same thing in defense industries when classified information is involved. I remember hiring in at TRW (now Northrup Grumman) at Space Park in Redondo Beach back when they were still smarting from the real life spying chronicled in The Falcon and the Snowman. Suffice it to say that if there were even minor infractions of the security of classified data, right down to a person without a clearance being found in an area that required them, there would be firings and the FBI would be called. Same basic thing when I worked in a factory that produced microwave modules for the DOD here in MN. We all knew who the one guy who wasn’t a citizen was (and couldn’t view ITAR documents), and we all knew who had the clearances to deal with the classified parts and measurement/manufacture of the same.
So when Hiliary gets away with destroying 30,000 government records, hundreds of them classified, with nothing more than a slap on the wrist, that rankles those of us who’ve worked in defense related industries. We know from experience that the rest of us do not get that consideration, and Comey admitted as much in his comments about the case, saying more or less “she got away with it, but don’t you people who aren’t Clintons think you can.”
Like I’ve been saying, finger on the scale in favor of the left and the power structure. It reeks to high Heaven.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
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