Both Biden and Trump had TS/SCI documents in what was found.
So far the only reporting I’ve seen on Pence is “classified” which can mean lesser stuff. I don’t believe there is any point in “waiting to find out exactly what the docs contained.” It’s doubtful that will ever be revealed.
Yes, we know that biden had TS documents. You aren’t going to find out any more information about what they contained.
But that kind of handling of TS documents is not appropriate or acceptable to me.
I bet the contractor who left the plans for the nuclear sub in @Dan_Theman desk didn’t do it intentionally. It did not stop him from losing his job and almost certainly his security clearance.
I’ve been a pretty consistent critic of the imperial presidency since Reagan invaded Grenada. In a perfect world, Trump should go to jail for life for the insurrection. But, I’m happy to see him go to jail for damn near anything at this point. Even though, Trump’s mishandling is far more serious than Pence, Biden, or Hillary as a practical matter, it is harder to make the case that Trump should go to jail for a decade, and let the other three get off scott free. I think the world of Gen. David Petraus, but his punishment of $100K fine and 2 years probation was appropriate, and maybe even a little light.
I don’t really blame the principals, this is primarily a staff failure, but the principals hired the staff and so share in the blame.The executive branch needs to treat this stuff much more seriously and devote more resources to it. Even if it means minor inconvenience to the President, VP, and Cabinet secretaries, like signing that they taken XYZ secret document home with them.
Perhaps if handling the flood of classified material becomes too burdensome to the senior folks in the executive branch, they may have an incentive to reduce the overclassification.
Trump did not mishandle documents. He stole documents, then hid them, then lied about having them, then obstructed efforts to recover them. It is not at all hard to grasp that he seems to have committed crimes, while the others don’t seem to have committed crimes.
This thinking is the whole reason for my pushback.
Yes, I agree that most of Trump’s criminal liability stems from his apparent attempts to prevent the government from getting the documents.
I don’t know that for sure, and you don’t either. I think he is guilty of all the other stuff, but I’m not exactly an unbiased observer. The underly crime is having top secret document in a unsecured location, and in that respect they all fucked up.
I don’t think this is the underlying crime that the DOJ appears to be investigating. Everything I’ve read suggests that this is the actual crime in question, which does not require that any of the documents are classified at all.
I’m coming around on this too. Trump is an ass and there’s a world of difference between his obfuscation and Biden’s response, but I can definitely imagine a scenario where Trump didn’t actually intend to take TS documents and do something nefarious with them. If I accept that POTUS and VP classified document handling processes are broken, (and they sure seem like it so far) then I can accept the idea that Trump didn’t “steal” the documents. His crap reaction could come from his normal “Fuck you! Sue me!” response to any dispute.
Trump made statements that suggested intentionally taking them (like when he claimed they were actually his), but as you say, there’s a high probability that such statements were just due to him being an imbecile.
Yeah, that’s the thing with Trump. You never really know what’s dumbass bluster or him just being a criminal.
I know. WhyNotBoth.gif
Timex: I know you’ve worked with classified documents, but have you ever worked in the West Wing? My feeling is that by tradition and given the deference to the President’s classification authority, the processes are totally different there. Maybe it’s unacceptable to you, but that is pretty meaningless if every administration has done the same thing all along.
Well maybe that needs to change if they are all mishandling classified documents.
I mean, you can have places defined as open storage locations for classified materials, but those kinds of places are not places where you would have a bunch of lackeys just grabbing up stuff and throwing it into boxes.
I suspect that in the case of someone like pence, or Trump, at least some of their apparent sloppiness is due to the complete shit show that their transition to Biden was, plus the general incompetence and sloppiness of their overall administration.
For Biden, who knows, but at least some of those classified materials went back from his time as a senator, when he wasn’t even VP.
This is a helpful summary of how Trump’s treatment of classified documents while in office differed from other presidents, including reported evidence that he deliberately took and meant to keep official presidential records. Tl;dr: he actually packed some of the boxes.
File this under “maybe the public isn’t as dumb as I thought.”
Tl;dr: most people think Biden is handling it correctly, cooperating, while most think Trump did not. Most think an investigation is appropriate but don’t seem to think Biden did anything wrong. Most people like Biden personally and the docs ‘scandal’ hasn’t changed his overall approval rating.
Two of Pence’s homes are being searched today by the FBI. It seems to be voluntary, since he has been cooperating with the DOJ in the matter of the mishandled documents he found and turned in earlier.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/politics/trump-classified-records-laptop/index.html
A Trump aide had previously copied those same documents onto a thumb drive and laptop, not realizing they were classified. The laptop, which belonged to an aide, who works for Save America PAC, and the thumb drive were also given to investigators in January.
But her emails!
Why someone was making portable electronic copies of that document without knowing what it was is a bit of a question, isn’t it?
Well, it’s possible that they knew the general topic of the document, without realizing it’s clarification level. Or it could have been mixed in with unclass documents.
This suggests a general sloppiness and disregard for the rules though.
The document itself would have had clear markings indicating it’s classification level, in every single page, so anyone actually looking at it works immediately know it was classified (that’s why we have those markings).
Likewise, copying classified documents via thumb drive to an unclass computer isn’t something that could easily happen in environments I’ve worked in. Most high side machines do not allow transfer of data over USB, to prevent this kind of thing. Also, I’ve always been taught that ANY data, regardless of marking, from a high side source is itself classified unless it goes through a release process.
So, yeah, someone almost certainly fucked up, which is hardly surprising given trunks entire administration is just one long cacophony of incompetence.
The story implies that Trump had the physical document now, and the PAC staffer maybe scanned it then transferred it using a thumb drive? I don’t think it was copied from a secure machine.
I think ‘why?’ is an interesting question.
Scanning classified documents with unclassified equipment is supremely bad, for obvious reasons.