srothstein wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 1:51 pmThe problem with the Espionage Act as it pertains to Trump is that it requires the possession to be unauthorized or with the intent to harm the US or benefit a foreign country. Since Trump was the man in legal control of who was authorized, including authorizing himself, he could not possibly be in unauthorized possession. After the blowup of Hillary's aiding Russia case, there is no way anyone could prove Trump was doing something to harm the US or benefit a foreign country. The interesting loophole on all this is that if he was doing it to benefit himself by using it in his business, it is not a crime.powerboatr wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 1:15 pmi think thats thin using espionage act. becasue the discovery portion by trumps legal team would most certainly drag comey, clinton, fbi personnel that were found to be harboring classified documents and that comey even leaked them to the press. use their NON CASES as precedent. which should force garland to charge or arrest those people if he plans on trumps charge stickingphilip964 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 13, 2022 11:25 pm I have heard from a friend that the top secret document thing is not going be the charge as the President does not have to abide by those laws. He will be charged under a World War 1 espionage law set up to arrest spies.
The news was so infuriating, they were breathlessly asking the question- “Has the nation been endangered by the actions of this Former President”. As if Russian and Chinese spy’s have had complete access to Mar a Lago and to Melania’s underwater drawers.
IMO
the true RAID was mot\re about jan 6th evidence. the warrant was pretty broad .
if archives or intel folks on the premises had issue with some classified documents, they appeared to have already fixed that by him declassifying them and the double locked storage. not to mention the months long file review etc that has been going on to ensure everything was in its place .
As I pointed out above, he also had no classified documents because he had declassified them. And he was the final arbiter of what was classified until Biden was sworn in.
As for the claim of violation of the Presidential Records Act, that is a possibility. But that is not a crime. There is nothing in the law that I can find that defines any penalty for the president violating it. It is in Title 44, while federal crimes are generally in Title 18 (with military crimes in Title 10).
This means there was no real legal justification for the search warrant. So, I think it was done more for political reasons and I doubt those reasons had to do with January 6th. Both this whole warrant show and the on-going January 6th circus are more, IMO, to do with discrediting Trump in case he runs again. They are deathly afraid of him getting in office again and wanted to scare him off and convince voters he is a criminal to stop them for voting for him. Ironically, I think their ploy backfired on them and convinced him to run again when he was going to not run and instead play kingmaker and support Desantis.
As I type that, a Machiavellian thought came to mind. Maybe that is what they wanted after all. They know they could not beat Desantis but they think they can beat him by convincing independents he is crooked. That is a weird thought, but possible. Either way, I believe it had more to do with the next presidential election (with a little benefit to the mid-terms thrown in) than any real crime.
And this politicization of the DOJ makes me agree that we need to remove almost all federal law enforcement and turn that power back over to the states.
