UPDATE: Saturday, Jun 10, 2023 · 5:55:04 PM +00:00
·
Dem
These idiots think that it's new since Comer's threat got the FD-1023 released. FBI didn't want to release it because it's UNVERIFIED! Comer had ALREADY SEEN it. He KNOWS there's nothing to it. But now all the MAGA are talking about it as if it's new. And if you Google Biden $5 million Burisma Holdings, then you will see all these crazy claims. Not that it matters, but how many know that it's an unverified claim repeated by a second hand source.
These people have no morals. It's disgusting. They're making allegations that they know are false.
Granted I am not a lawyer, but having read the indictment and read and watched/ heard legal experts on the indictment and it seems difficult to believe Donald Trump won't be found guilty, loose right LEANING cannons aside. So, the right is forced to lean in on whataboutisms.
Although I already felt some level of comfort about the differences between Secretary Clinton, President Biden, Vice President Mike Pence and the orange bigot, I wanted to look a little more into it and make sure I had as many good answers as I could, certainly enough for any fair minded person.
The very best that the right can do with regard to the President Biden situation is 80 days and archivists don't believe President Biden's team was fully cooperative.
.
A (archivists believe President Biden's team was not fully cooperative)
The answer about archivists not feeling President Biden's team was fully cooperative is (1) their apparent unhappiness is about documents that they themselves don't believe are classified and were in Boston in the legal office of his personal attorney. (2) Not believing President Biden's team was "fully cooperative" is very different than the willful obstruction of Donald Trump. (3) It's possible that his attorney felt that these were about Joe Biden as a private citizen with his personal attorney not about anything having to do with the government.
...
B (There was an 80 day period between when documents were first found in the possession of President Biden and the apparently final search of President Biden's residence on January 20. )
The MAGA Republicans are talking about the 80 days between the first time documents were found in President Biden's custody on November 2 and the apparently final search on January 20th. They also complain that President Biden didn't hold a press conference or otherwise discuss it with the press.
Since the quote supporting this is longer, it's at the bottom of the diary. There is zero evidence that President Biden tried to lie about having the documents or conceal them by moving them and trying to hide them from NARA or the FBI. He never attempted to obstruct justice. President Biden notified NARA about the documents within 24 hours. In fact, President Biden took the initiative and told NARA that he had documents that they should have. Nor do we have any evidence that President Biden was responsible for making NARA wait an excessively long time or that he was responsible for any delay. Furthermore, he cooperated with the searches instead of obstructing justice like Donald Trump. Finally, it appears that they kept looking at different buildings over that time period from November 2nd to January 20th. President Biden lived at or worked at or belonged to his attorney. This is an ongoing investigation. Therefore, it makes sense that President Biden would not talk about it. Eighty days of compliance is vastly different than a year and a half of obstruction of justice.
.
(C) President Biden gave 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware.
There is a Presidential Records Act. There is no Senator Records Act. What he did when he gave those documents to the University of Delaware from his time as a senator was perfectly legal.
President Biden did nothing illegal or wrong in giving the 1,850 boxes of documents to the University of Delaware
"But Trump’s vague insinuations that there is something improper about the existence of the Biden collection at the University of Delaware are baseless. The collection of donated documents is from Biden’s 36-year tenure as a US senator for Delaware. Unlike presidents, who are subject to the Presidential Records Act, senators own their offices’ documents and can do whatever they want with them – donate them to colleges, keep them at their homes, give them to journalists, even throw them in the trash.
'No statute governs their retention or disposition and there is no public right of access to congressional records, under FOIA or any other statute,' Margaret Kwoka, a law professor at The Ohio State University and an expert on information law, said in a Friday email. "
.
The 49 page federal indictment of Donald Trump is so different than no serious, informed and honest person would find the two even remotely close to equivalent. Donald Trump was asked for documents that The Presidential Records Act makes clear did not belong to him. He lied to NARA and the FBI and the DOJ and moved the documents in an attempt to conceal them and obstruct justice. NARA and the FBI and the DOJ tried to get these documents from him over a period of 18 months. 21 of these documents were top secret. Audio shows that he knew that he had not declassified them and that he was then showing them to somebody he knew did not have the security clearance to see it or need to know. He handled the more than 300 documents recklessly. They were not secure. We have documentation of his attempt to deceive the FBI and the DOJ and persuading attorneys to do help him deceive NARA and the FBI and the DOJ.
.
(D) Then they get really desperate after these attempts at equivalence fail and they claim that President Biden got a $5 million bribe from Ukraine.
However much fervor they have when they make this assertion, it is baseless and bullshit. Rudy Giuliani went to Ukraine to find dirt on Hunter or Joe Biden or both and likely fell for Russian disinformation. There was a person who is extremist dishonest fascist liar James Comer's "highly credible" human source, but this person ONLY HEARD OR IS ONLY REPEATING SOMETHING HE WAS TOLD BY ANOTHER SOURCE WHOSE CREDIBILITY IS UNKNOWN AND NEITHER HE, THE "HIGHLY CREDIBLE" HUMAN SOURCE, NOR THE FBI WERE ABLE TO VERIFY OR AUTHENTICATE WHAT THAT "HIGHLY CREDIBLE" SOURCE WAS TOLD. That's why it was dropped by AG BARR'S DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE AND THE FBI.
(E) Secretary Clinton was, they claim, treated differently. They claim she had her attorney delete over 30,000 emails containing classified information and was not prosecuted.
.
The simple answer is that there is no evidence that Secretary Clinton intended to obstruct any investigation.
.
Here's what actually happened
.
"In 2014, the State Department realized that they had a gap in records, and asked Clinton, as well as other secretaries of state, to turn over any work-related emails that they may have. The lawyers doing the sorting for Clinton in 2014 did not read all of the individual emails. Instead, they did keyword searches to find ones that they were work related.
“It is highly likely their search terms missed some work-related e-mails, and that we later found them, for example, in the mailboxes of other officials or in the slack space of a server,” Comey, said during Congressional testimony.
“[Clinton] then was asked by her lawyers at the end, ‘Do you want us to keep the personal emails?’ And she said, ‘I have no use for them anymore.’ It’s then that they issued the direction that the technical people delete them,” he said. "
.
.
Trump's claims about Secretary Clinton are false (ABC)
About Hillary's 33,000 deleted emails FBI Director James Comey has said Clinton’s attorneys did not look thoroughly at the messages and generally relied on the “to,” “from” and “subject” fields.
This may have resulted in some work-related messages being erased as personal, but Comey said that if this happened it did not appear to be intentional. “We believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort,” Comey said.
Accordingly, there "is a meaningful distinction" between Trump's alleged handling of classified documents and what the Justice Department's inspector general says transpired in the Clinton case, according to Mattivi, a Republican who recently lost a primary race to become attorney general of Kansas.
"Federal prosecutors looked at the same statute when contemplating charges against Clinton and her aides for the classified information found on her private email servers.
To charge any of them with violating 793(e), prosecutors would have had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Clinton or her aides acted "willfully" and "with the intent to do something the law forbids," the Justice Department's inspector general said in its report on the case.
Prosecutors determined that the evidence and facts of Clinton's case showed "a lack of intent to communicate classified information on unclassified systems," especially since "[n]one of the emails Clinton received were properly marked to inform her of the classified status of the information," and investigators found evidence that Clinton and her aides "worded emails carefully in an attempt to 'talk around' classified information," according to the inspector general's report.
"There was no evidence that the senders or former Secretary Clinton believed or were aware at the time that the emails contained classified information," prosecutors concluded, according to the inspector general.
So prosecutors decided "there was no basis" to charge Clinton or her aides, the inspector general said.
That decision "was consistent with the Department's historical approach in prior cases under different leadership," the inspector general said, noting his office "found no evidence that the conclusions by the prosecutors were affected by bias or other improper considerations."
Witnesses in the Clinton case told investigators they "expected that any emails sent to a state.gov address would be preserved" -- and many of those emails were acquired from other devices -- so "there was no evidence that Clinton or anyone else" intended to conceal, remove or destroy the emails from government systems, the inspector general said.
In addition, federal prosecutors concluded that, unlike the electronic communications underpinning Clinton's case, "every prosecution under Section 2071 has involved" the "physical removal" or destruction of a document, the inspector general said.
.
Trump's claims about Hillary Clinton are false(Politico)
.
"This may have resulted in some work-related messages being erased as personal, but Comey said that if this happened it did not appear to be intentional. 'We believe our investigation has been sufficient to give us reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort,' Comey said."
.
The whataboutisms of the MAGA GOP all fail. Any reading of the actual 49 page indictment and comparison to what the evidence in the situations of Secretary Clinton and President Biden show how completely different they are. The most important and obvious difference is intent. There is zero evidence that Secretary Clinton and President Biden intended to mislead the DOJ or NARA. There is no evidence that either Secretary Clinton or President Biden intended to obstruct justice. There is no evidence that Secretary Clinton or President Biden intentionally shared classified information with people who lacked the requisite security clearance. There is no Senators Records Act.
Donald Trump took over 300 documents that were not his according to the Presidential Records Act. The Presidential Records Act says that any documents that pass through the president's hands as part of his position as president or that were offered or made available to him because he was president belong to NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration. He was informed about this before he left. When he tried to claim that the Presidential Records Act means the opposite of what it says, he is intentionally saying something he knows is false. He is lying. NARA asked him for documents that belong to them and not Donald Trump. Donald Trump's response was to lie to them, to the FBI, and to the DOJ. He lied to them and moved the documents, intending to conceal them, and, this, obstruct justice, and he did this for a period of 18 months. He shared top secret information that he knew he had not declassified with somebody who did not have the needed security clearance according to audio of his own voice. He recklessly handled some of the most vital classified information this country has. He lured and convinced others including his attorneys to lie to NARA and the FBI and the DOJ. The evidence shows the gravity of these crimes. These are some of the most serious crimes a public official can commit. The evidence for the veracity of the charges is overwhelming. He must be found guilty.
******************************
.
President Biden's timeline for the document searches
PENCE AND BIDEN: There is no indication either was aware of the existence of the records before they were found and turned over.
It appears both sides turned over the records quickly, without intent to conceal. That’s important because the Justice Department historically looks for willfulness, or an intent to mishandle government secrets, in deciding whether to bring criminal charges.
BIDEN: It’s unclear precisely how many classified papers have been recovered from Biden’s home and former office. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, said earlier this month that “a small number of documents with classified markings” were discovered on Nov. 2, 2022, in a locked closet at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank in Washington, as Biden’s personal attorneys were clearing out the offices.
Biden’s personal lawyers then began examining other locations where records might have been shipped after Biden left the vice presidency in 2017. They found documents on Dec. 20 in his Wilmington garage and on Jan. 11 and 12 in his home library.
Sauber said that the Justice Department was “immediately notified” and took custody of the records.
On Jan. 20, Biden voluntarily allowed the FBI to search his Wilmington home, where additional documents were located.
BIDEN: After the materials were discovered at the think tank on Nov. 2, Biden’s personal attorneys immediately alerted the White House counsel’s office, which notified the National Archives, Sauber said. The Archives took custody of the documents the next day.Sauber said Jan. 12 that a second batch of documents with classified markings — a “small number,” he said — had been found in a storage space in Biden’s garage near Wilmington, Delaware, along with one document located in Biden’s personal library in his home. Days later, Sauber clarified that six pages, not a single one, had been found in the library.
During a nearly 13-hour search on Jan. 20, FBI agents searching Biden’s Delaware home located six additional items that contained documents with classified markings and also took possession of some of his handwritten notes, the president’s lawyer, Bob Bauer, said Saturday.