Vandalus said:
calbear93 said:
Unit2Sucks said:
So much for the "all they had to do is ask" argument.
I would call a raid a special type of asking for mischievous boys.
Disclaimer - I came to read this entire thread in one sitting for the first time just now. Seeing it in that context allows for a wonderful meander down the path (in real time) to see how various people were reacting to the news as it was happening. Obviously this is an ever evolving story, with updates seemingly every day that changes and imbues how prior information is processed.
I quote you CB93 because your initial take was, if I may summarize it (acknowledging that your take was thorough, so this will not do it justice), was essentially: "the search warrant may have been strictly speaking legal, but the effect of it is highly political, so unless its something major, this is a major overreach."
Now that you have had the opportunity to digest all of the current updates as to what transpired, do you still believe that this was a massive (or at the least, politically risky and ill advised) move to make, or has your opinion changed on the merits of the action to retrieve the documents in the manner that the feds did?
Good question.
Just to be clear, neither my opinion nor my concern has changed. What has changed is that I am not responding to my concern about the precedent but I am responding to the blind defense of Trump over the rule of law by the far right. My concern was never about whether Trump violated the laws or whether the search was legal. I believe that Trump was either stupid enough, selfish enough or corrupt enough to take classified or top secret information with him.
My concern about the ramification of this move still remains. The fact that the Attorney General has now at least addressed this to the extent that he could has alleviated the concern. However, raiding the home of a former president is clearly an unprecedented action and breaking that norm can lead us down a path of normalizing same type of action (whether the misdeeds rise to Trump level or not - neither party has shied away from using false equivalence) by future administration against their predecessor of the opposite party.
There have been norms that have been broken quite often, whether presidents not speaking ill of their predecessor or whether former president not speaking ill of the current president. Being a president is a tough job where only a person who has experienced it can relate. There was also great effort made to ensure peaceful transition of power, and our democracy relied on folks appreciating the value of our process that enabled such transition.
All of this broke down with Trump, mostly with Trump doing the breaking of norms for his own ego and benefit, including inciting actions that interrupted the sanctity of the vote and the transition of power. I hated all of that, and that is one of the main reasons I hate Trump. However, the raid was also a breaking from the norm that could add an additional crack to future peaceful transition of power. The only way we counter that is to show a clear and unique set of circumstances that results in serious criminal indictment of Trump. Short of that, this only helped Trump and created a dangerous precedent.
Having said that, in all other circumstances where we were not looking to ensure maximum protection for future transition of power, I have no doubt this was truly justified and Trump is a slimy, corrupt and unpatriotic *******.
