Unit2Sucks said:

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bearister said:

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Trump says you can declassify documents by just thinking about it pic.twitter.com/cFbQ1zclnq

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2022

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The good news is that Biden, by the power of thought alone, just re-classified everything that Trump pretended to have de-classified and said "no backsies, infinity" so that's the end of that.

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This is actually quite funny. LOL.

sycasey said:

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BearGoggles said:

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I still think there's an obvious double standard. No one has explained to me why a warrant was pursued for Trump vs. HRC (or for that matter Comey). Or why many in HRCs camp (e.g., Cheryl Mills) were given immunity in exchange for an agreement to produce materials that could have been seized by warrant. Why did the DOJ negotiate with (and make unprecedented concessions to) the Clinton team, but raid Trump?

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Isn't this mostly because Clinton's team cooperated and turned over materials and Trump did not?

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Clinton's team was told to turn over their phones and then used bleach bit and hammers on them.

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/best-of-clinton-fbi-report-227692

bearister said:

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Trump says you can declassify documents by just thinking about it pic.twitter.com/cFbQ1zclnq

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 22, 2022

Note that when tRump gets agitated, he goes into a schizoid hyper speed non sensical babble that resembles speaking in tongues at a Pentecostal revival meeting.

He has no idea what turn in the hallway his sentences are going down next since he is literally making sh@it up as his stream of consciousness vomits out.This is why he can never testify in court.

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In all seriousness, I agree with you. Trump babbles and says nonsense when challenged. He's awful. Thank god he's no longer president.

Since I know this is not a partisan thing for you, please share your assessment of this recent behavior:

WATCH: President Biden appears lost on stage following remarks at the Global Fund’s Seventh Replenishment Conference pic.twitter.com/lnpz8VJQUQ

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) September 21, 2022

I won't link to the many instances of Biden forgetting his train of thought, slurring, saying "ya know what I mean", "no joke", etc. Or that time he had to be rescued by the Easter bunny.

Looking forward to your thoughts on the current president - seems at least as important as the former.

BearGoggles said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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At this point, the FBI and DOJ have lost the benefit of the doubt. I hope they have the goods here. But if the warrant was based solely on a dispute over official or classified records and there was no evidence that the records were being destroyed (or at risk of disclosure), then this was major overreach and the results will be catastrophic.

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BearGoggles said:

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And for the record, I'd like all parties who misappropriate or leak classified info to be prosecuted and lose their security clearance. That includes Trump, HRC, Comey, and McCabe. The problem is the DOJ and FBI hasn't done that. Even Petraeus was let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

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A lot has happened since you made these posts over a month ago.

What do you think now of the way the FBI and DOJ have handled this dispute?

Based solely on the undisputed facts, what do you think of Trump's actions?

---

I think the FBI and DOJ likely overreached in pursuing the warrant - but until we know the nature of the "documents marked classified" I'm not sure. Hopefully more detail will come out - though we already have seen misleading leaking from the DOJ (what happened to the "nuclear secrets" claim?).

The scope of the warrant has been revealed to be overly broad (probably unconstitutionally so) - lots of people on the left think that's the case. I think it remains unclear whether there's an actual criminal case, though pursuing a criminal case is not necessarily a requirement to pursuing a warrant.

I still think there's an obvious double standard. No one has explained to me why a warrant was pursued for Trump vs. HRC (or for that matter Comey). Or why many in HRCs camp (e.g., Cheryl Mills) were given immunity in exchange for an agreement to produce materials that could have been seized by warrant. Why did the DOJ negotiate with (and make unprecedented concessions to) the Clinton team, but raid Trump?

As is typical, Trump is his own worst enemy - there is seemingly no rational explanation for his behavior (which, again, is typical). He has hired (with limited exception) mediocre attorneys who are doing him no favors. No surprise there.

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Virtually everything you say here is a generous defense of Trump and you have chosen to play fast and loose with the facts in order to protect Trump. No surprise there.

Let's list all the problems:
1. You think the FBI/DOJ overreached but you have to "know the nature" of the "documents marked classified."

I presume you will continue to feel this way until you personally review the classified materials. The more sensitive the docs are, the less likely the government is to tell us about them.

The fact that you had "documents marked classified" seems to imply that you think Trump may have magically declassified materials and that his pretend declassification renders sensitive national security information no longer dangerous. You also claim, without any reasonable basis, that the DOJ leaked information about the classified materials relating to "nuclear secrets" when it's more likely that the "people familiar with the matter" who leaked the information are some of the litany of scoundrels in and around Trump's orbit.

2. You say the scope has been "revealed to be overly broad (probably unconstitutionally so)." This is laughable. Please point us to the "lots of people on the left" who have taken that position. On the contrary, "lots of people on the right" including some very relevant people like Bill Barr, find no fault with the warrant. You pretending like this warrant is bad, and even unconstitutional, is the biggest tell that you are going to excuse Trump's misconduct no matter what. Bill Barr is defending Trump today in the NY AG matter but even he was able to acknowledge that it was a good warrant. This is probably your funniest claim.

3. We have explained why a warrant was called for here and not with Hillary. This is all out in the open - Hillary turned over all of the emails that she had (except ones that her law firm (which I believe was Williams and Connolly - not exactly Rudy G or whatever attorneys Trump is slumming around with these days) said were personal. Everyone understands that her IT guy deleted the emails her law firm said were personal and we all know that the IT guy should not have done that. Regardless, we know she could not have provided those emails post-deletion so there was no need for a warrant. You can continue to pretend that her legitimate law firm like W&C fraudulently categorized emails as personal, but that's just your partisan pretense. There is no real reason to believe that.

In reality, she had zero classified emails and since she wasn't continuing to stonewall the FBI, there was no reason to issue a warrant. She met with investigators and answered their questions, as she always does when investigated (remember the 10+ hour Benghazi questioning?). She didn't have her lawyers certify that all records had been handed over when they hadn't and she never demanded the government return the emails or claimed that she could by transubstantiation make them her own. By comparison, for all we know Trump STILL hasn't turned over all of the records and we shouldn't be surprised if another search is executed on his other properties soon. All this talk about her destroying phones and using bleach bit is silly and you know this. This is just your usual partisan hijinx. No reasonable person believes that Hillary was using her server to surreptitiously exfiltrate classified information the way Trump has acknowledged doing. I don't think even think you would pretend to claim that she was.

I’m more tired of talking about this than anyone, but here we are.

If you’re interested in the facts, you can read more here:https://t.co/lp7XqnSd4G

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 6, 2022

Many people "on the right" have acknowledged how Trump engaged in bad faith but people who are reflexive Trump defenders can't seem to understand what was going on. The only double standard was that as a former president and noted axxhole, Trump was afforded far more leeway than a crook like him ever should have been. Even Bill Barr has asked how long the DOJ should wait to be jerked around by Trump before reclaiming government property?

Barr: I think for them to taken things to the current point they probably have pretty good evidence.. People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a county club pic.twitter.com/k1L32WqWGX

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2022

4. You say Trump is his worst enemy as if to excuse all of his criminality. Wasn't Jeffrey Dahmer his own worse enemy? Trump's biggest problem isn't that he's a jerk, it's that he misappropriated government property and refused to give it back, which is a crime. You've acknowledged as much and previously said that he should be prosecuted if he did so. With every release of new information - including from Trump himself as recently as last night on Sean Hannity's show - it's reinforced that criminality. Yet here you are defending him and pretending like the real issue is some double standard about Hillary Clinton, which is like comparing a parking ticket to ... Jeffrey Dahmer.

lest you try to pretend otherwise, this was the position you were pretending to take just a month ago. Now that it has been more than amply shown that Trump misappropriated classified info (and is continuing to publicly confirm it!) you are singing a different tune. Please remind us again how you don't really support Trump though.

BearGoggles said:

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And for the record, I'd like all parties who misappropriate or leak classified info to be prosecuted and lose their security clearance. That includes Trump, HRC, Comey, and McCabe. The problem is the DOJ and FBI hasn't done that. Even Petraeus was let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

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Unit2Sucks said:

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4. You say Trump is his worst enemy as if to excuse all of his criminality. Wasn't Jeffrey Dahmer his own worse enemy? Trump's biggest problem isn't that he's a jerk, it's that he misappropriated government property and refused to give it back, which is a crime. You've acknowledged as much and previously said that he should be prosecuted if he did so. With every release of new information - including from Trump himself as recently as last night on Sean Hannity's show - it's reinforced that criminality. Yet here you are defending him and pretending like the real issue is some double standard about Hillary Clinton, which is like comparing a parking ticket to ... Jeffrey Dahmer.

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No matter how much BG "pretends" not to not be a fan of Trump, he ALWAYS winds up making "excuses" for him and defends him 24/7. His pattern here on OT is well documented. In that regard, he's been as consistent as the sun coming up every morning.

If this was a tennis match, I'd say that you just beat BG in straight sets.
One of the "quickest" matches in Grand Slam history.

BearGoggles said:

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DiabloWags said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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BearGoggles has always shown himself "eager" to answer your questions.

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Not sure why he's gone MIA on yours.

Maybe he's grown tired of trying to defend someone that can no longer be defended?

Maybe he's finally come to the realization that Trump can no longer be defended?

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Maybe BearGoggles was not defending Trump in the first place but instead doesn't like double standards and bad precedent?

Maybe BearGoggles wasn't on this board 24/7 and instead lived in the real world? You should try it - it would be good for you.

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You mean like a private citizen taking over 100 classified documents with them to their private home?
And telling the Department of Justice that you turned over everything, but you actually didnt?
Highly sensitive property of the U.S. Government?

You mean that kind of "bad" precedent?

DiabloWags said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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4. You say Trump is his worst enemy as if to excuse all of his criminality. Wasn't Jeffrey Dahmer his own worse enemy? Trump's biggest problem isn't that he's a jerk, it's that he misappropriated government property and refused to give it back, which is a crime. You've acknowledged as much and previously said that he should be prosecuted if he did so. With every release of new information - including from Trump himself as recently as last night on Sean Hannity's show - it's reinforced that criminality. Yet here you are defending him and pretending like the real issue is some double standard about Hillary Clinton, which is like comparing a parking ticket to ... Jeffrey Dahmer.

---

No matter how much BG "pretends" not to not be a fan of Trump, he ALWAYS winds up making "excuses" for him and defends him 24/7. His pattern here on OT is well documented. In that regard, he's been as consistent as the sun coming up every morning.

If this was a tennis match, I'd say that you just beat BG in straight sets.
One of the "quickest" matches in Grand Slam history.

---

My favorite bit here was comparing Trump's confused, bumbling Hannity interview in which he may have further implicated himself in a crime and trying to equate it to a clip of Biden looking confused about whether or not he should leave the stage after a speech. Not the same thing!

sycasey said:

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DiabloWags said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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4. You say Trump is his worst enemy as if to excuse all of his criminality. Wasn't Jeffrey Dahmer his own worse enemy? Trump's biggest problem isn't that he's a jerk, it's that he misappropriated government property and refused to give it back, which is a crime. You've acknowledged as much and previously said that he should be prosecuted if he did so. With every release of new information - including from Trump himself as recently as last night on Sean Hannity's show - it's reinforced that criminality. Yet here you are defending him and pretending like the real issue is some double standard about Hillary Clinton, which is like comparing a parking ticket to ... Jeffrey Dahmer.

---

No matter how much BG "pretends" not to not be a fan of Trump, he ALWAYS winds up making "excuses" for him and defends him 24/7. His pattern here on OT is well documented. In that regard, he's been as consistent as the sun coming up every morning.

If this was a tennis match, I'd say that you just beat BG in straight sets.
One of the "quickest" matches in Grand Slam history.

---

My favorite bit here was comparing Trump's confused, bumbling Hannity interview in which he may have further implicated himself in a crime and trying to equate it to a clip of Biden looking confused about whether or not he should leave the stage after a speech. Not the same thing!

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Yes the real problem isn't a grifter and crook who stole DNI, is under investigation for election fraud and facing a massive lawsuit for fraud in NY (in response to which he and his children repeatedly took the fifth to avoid self-incrimination), and that's without getting into the previous fraud with Trump University, their "charity", Felix Sator, and on and on and on. The real problem is that our current president is a gaffe machine and has one terrible son. It's gotten so bad that there are rumors Biden might even *gasp* eat dijon mustard and wear tan suits. I'm not sure our democracy can survive Biden's gaffes, but Trump's escalating criminality is just fine by the GOP.

Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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Unit2Sucks said:

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BearGoggles said:

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At this point, the FBI and DOJ have lost the benefit of the doubt. I hope they have the goods here. But if the warrant was based solely on a dispute over official or classified records and there was no evidence that the records were being destroyed (or at risk of disclosure), then this was major overreach and the results will be catastrophic.

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BearGoggles said:

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And for the record, I'd like all parties who misappropriate or leak classified info to be prosecuted and lose their security clearance. That includes Trump, HRC, Comey, and McCabe. The problem is the DOJ and FBI hasn't done that. Even Petraeus was let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

---

A lot has happened since you made these posts over a month ago.

What do you think now of the way the FBI and DOJ have handled this dispute?

Based solely on the undisputed facts, what do you think of Trump's actions?

---

I think the FBI and DOJ likely overreached in pursuing the warrant - but until we know the nature of the "documents marked classified" I'm not sure. Hopefully more detail will come out - though we already have seen misleading leaking from the DOJ (what happened to the "nuclear secrets" claim?).

The scope of the warrant has been revealed to be overly broad (probably unconstitutionally so) - lots of people on the left think that's the case. I think it remains unclear whether there's an actual criminal case, though pursuing a criminal case is not necessarily a requirement to pursuing a warrant.

I still think there's an obvious double standard. No one has explained to me why a warrant was pursued for Trump vs. HRC (or for that matter Comey). Or why many in HRCs camp (e.g., Cheryl Mills) were given immunity in exchange for an agreement to produce materials that could have been seized by warrant. Why did the DOJ negotiate with (and make unprecedented concessions to) the Clinton team, but raid Trump?

As is typical, Trump is his own worst enemy - there is seemingly no rational explanation for his behavior (which, again, is typical). He has hired (with limited exception) mediocre attorneys who are doing him no favors. No surprise there.

---

Virtually everything you say here is a generous defense of Trump and you have chosen to play fast and loose with the facts in order to protect Trump. No surprise there.

Let's list all the problems:
1. You think the FBI/DOJ overreached but you have to "know the nature" of the "documents marked classified."

I presume you will continue to feel this way until you personally review the classified materials. The more sensitive the docs are, the less likely the government is to tell us about them.

The fact that you had "documents marked classified" seems to imply that you think Trump may have magically declassified materials and that his pretend declassification renders sensitive national security information no longer dangerous. You also claim, without any reasonable basis, that the DOJ leaked information about the classified materials relating to "nuclear secrets" when it's more likely that the "people familiar with the matter" who leaked the information are some of the litany of scoundrels in and around Trump's orbit.

2. You say the scope has been "revealed to be overly broad (probably unconstitutionally so)." This is laughable. Please point us to the "lots of people on the left" who have taken that position. On the contrary, "lots of people on the right" including some very relevant people like Bill Barr, find no fault with the warrant. You pretending like this warrant is bad, and even unconstitutional, is the biggest tell that you are going to excuse Trump's misconduct no matter what. Bill Barr is defending Trump today in the NY AG matter but even he was able to acknowledge that it was a good warrant. This is probably your funniest claim.

3. We have explained why a warrant was called for here and not with Hillary. This is all out in the open - Hillary turned over all of the emails that she had (except ones that her law firm (which I believe was Williams and Connolly - not exactly Rudy G or whatever attorneys Trump is slumming around with these days) said were personal. Everyone understands that her IT guy deleted the emails her law firm said were personal and we all know that the IT guy should not have done that. Regardless, we know she could not have provided those emails post-deletion so there was no need for a warrant. You can continue to pretend that her legitimate law firm like W&C fraudulently categorized emails as personal, but that's just your partisan pretense. There is no real reason to believe that.

In reality, she had zero classified emails and since she wasn't continuing to stonewall the FBI, there was no reason to issue a warrant. She met with investigators and answered their questions, as she always does when investigated (remember the 10+ hour Benghazi questioning?). She didn't have her lawyers certify that all records had been handed over when they hadn't and she never demanded the government return the emails or claimed that she could by transubstantiation make them her own. By comparison, for all we know Trump STILL hasn't turned over all of the records and we shouldn't be surprised if another search is executed on his other properties soon. All this talk about her destroying phones and using bleach bit is silly and you know this. This is just your usual partisan hijinx. No reasonable person believes that Hillary was using her server to surreptitiously exfiltrate classified information the way Trump has acknowledged doing. I don't think even think you would pretend to claim that she was.

I’m more tired of talking about this than anyone, but here we are.

If you’re interested in the facts, you can read more here:https://t.co/lp7XqnSd4G

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 6, 2022

Many people "on the right" have acknowledged how Trump engaged in bad faith but people who are reflexive Trump defenders can't seem to understand what was going on. The only double standard was that as a former president and noted axxhole, Trump was afforded far more leeway than a crook like him ever should have been. Even Bill Barr has asked how long the DOJ should wait to be jerked around by Trump before reclaiming government property?

Barr: I think for them to taken things to the current point they probably have pretty good evidence.. People say this was unprecedented, well it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a county club pic.twitter.com/k1L32WqWGX

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 2, 2022

4. You say Trump is his worst enemy as if to excuse all of his criminality. Wasn't Jeffrey Dahmer his own worse enemy? Trump's biggest problem isn't that he's a jerk, it's that he misappropriated government property and refused to give it back, which is a crime. You've acknowledged as much and previously said that he should be prosecuted if he did so. With every release of new information - including from Trump himself as recently as last night on Sean Hannity's show - it's reinforced that criminality. Yet here you are defending him and pretending like the real issue is some double standard about Hillary Clinton, which is like comparing a parking ticket to ... Jeffrey Dahmer.

lest you try to pretend otherwise, this was the position you were pretending to take just a month ago. Now that it has been more than amply shown that Trump misappropriated classified info (and is continuing to publicly confirm it!) you are singing a different tune. Please remind us again how you don't really support Trump though.

BearGoggles said:

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And for the record, I'd like all parties who misappropriate or leak classified info to be prosecuted and lose their security clearance. That includes Trump, HRC, Comey, and McCabe. The problem is the DOJ and FBI hasn't done that. Even Petraeus was let off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

---

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1. You do realize that documents "marked classified" don't always remain classified? That was one of the exact claims HRC made (to some extent accurately). I have no idea if Trump declassified them - I haven't made that claim.

Bottom line, I don't trust/believe either the DOJ or Trump. Strangely, as a liberal, you have complete trust in the DOJ. Let's see how you feel about that when DeSantis is president (or whoever the next republican is) and his DOJ is chasing Biden or other dems.

I don't need to personally review the documents. I do need an objective third party that is not the DOJ (be it a judge or special master) to opine or provide a general description. Again, its quite odd that you are willing to unquestionably adopt the DOJs unproven claims.

The DOJ is clearly the leaking party. Trump - by his own admission - doesn't know what they took. And the reporters at NYT, etc., reporting on this are the same ones that dems leaked to during his administration. Why would Trump or his team leak the questionable claim that "nuclear secrets" were involved. Your argument here is just deperate.

2. The warrant is arguably an overly broad general warrant. The ACLU and lots of other liberal organization regular complain about exactly these types of things.

Overly general warrants that scoop up huge amounts of data — like everyone whose Internet search history contains a particular term or everyone who was in a particular area on a particular day — are a serious threat to our privacy.

They must be banned. https://t.co/O5U4QVVKST

— ACLU (@ACLU) March 31, 2022

Here's a December 2021 ACL article discussing the handling of data seized in warrants - ironnically entitled "Making Warrants Great Again"

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/mwga_december_2021_for_distribution.pdf

3. Your defense of the DOJ/HRC "investigation" is laughable. To claim that HRC's team cooperated when they literally (and indisputably) destroyed evidence. And the point is that while she was doing that, the DOJ negotiated for an extended period of time, rather than getting a warrant. And granted immunity. The double standard is clear.

The article you linked to is trash. Comey (and the FBI which you trust so implicitly and unquestionably) specifically found and announced that "110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."

As an aside, they also "The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014." Yet never a search warrant - why?

https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system

The FBI finding has never been disputed by anyone who actually looked at the evidence. The article you linked to, written by a very partisan guy (previously wrote for Salon and is a long time Clinton apologist), doesn't dispute this - it weakly attempts to excuse it. It is plain embarrassing that you would make this claim

4. My statement that Trump is his own worst enemy is not an excuse for anything. As usual, you want to make it so because anyone who stands up for principle can't get in the way of your TDS. And, if anything, that statement is an acknowledgement by me that he may well have stupidly violated that law and that, in any event, he's not even presenting clear arguments.

And just to be clear - are you a supporter of Bill Barr now? He is operating from the premise that the DOJ has good evidence - he may be right. But I don't give them the benefit of the doubt like he does. He's an DOJ institutionalist - and I mean that as a compliment. But I'll reserve judgement until the facts come out.

Let's see if the DOJ brings charges. Barr (among others) has previously predicted they will not, though he may have changed his mind on that.

As an aside, are you still claiming that Biden is fully cogent and among the smartest presidents? Just checking in on that one.

First I want to thank you again for giving me the opportunity to take you to the woodshed. Your response was as mewling as I anticipated it would be and defeats nothing I've said.

BearGoggles said:

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1. You do realize that documents "marked classified" don't always remain classified? That was one of the exact claims HRC made (to some extent accurately). I have no idea if Trump declassified them - I haven't made that claim.

Bottom line, I don't trust/believe either the DOJ or Trump. Strangely, as a liberal, you have complete trust in the DOJ. Let's see how you feel about that when DeSantis is president (or whoever the next republican is) and his DOJ is chasing Biden or other dems.

I don't need to personally review the documents. I do need an objective third party that is not the DOJ (be it a judge or special master) to opine or provide a general description. Again, its quite odd that you are willing to unquestionably adopt the DOJs unproven claims.

The DOJ is clearly the leaking party. Trump - by his own admission - doesn't know what they took. And the reporters at NYT, etc., reporting on this are the same ones that dems leaked to during his administration. Why would Trump or his team leak the questionable claim that "nuclear secrets" were involved. Your argument here is just deperate.

---

Whether or not you believe Trump's pretend declassification, it's obvious from the markings that the documents were at one point classified and contain extremely sensitive information. The fact that you think the DOJ is the leaking party speaks entirely to your partisanship and defense of Trump, not to reality. The DOJ benefits in no way from the leaks. We just went through 4+ years of Trump's "friends", colleagues and underlings massively undercutting him because they know how bad he is. It's far more likely that one of them leaked. You would probably criticize them for doing so in your all out defense of Trump, but instead since it's anonymous you would rather blame the DOJ.

Nice try.

BearGoggles said:

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2. The warrant is arguably an overly broad general warrant. The ACLU and lots of other liberal organization regular complain about exactly these types of things.

Overly general warrants that scoop up huge amounts of data — like everyone whose Internet search history contains a particular term or everyone who was in a particular area on a particular day — are a serious threat to our privacy.

They must be banned. https://t.co/O5U4QVVKST

— ACLU (@ACLU) March 31, 2022

Here's a December 2021 ACL article discussing the handling of data seized in warrants - ironnically entitled "Making Warrants Great Again"

https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/mwga_december_2021_for_distribution.pdf

---

That's cute but it has nothing to do with the warrant executed against Trump or the search. If anything the warrant was too narrow because it only picked up MAL as opposed to the other residences where there is evidence (including some from Trump on national TV) that he absconded with government property.

It was a clean search and resulted in the government collecting thousands of pages of government records. The only reason you consider this overreach is because you are driven to defend the GOP and Trump. This all started when you said "lots of people on the left think that's the case" and you haven't presented a single one. I've presented Bill Barr who is in a perfect position to know whether it was appropriate, has said that it is and STILL DEFENDS TRUMP. I haven't picked a Trump critic, I've picked his Attorney General and a guy who literally is still defending him.

BearGoggles said:

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3. Your defense of the DOJ/HRC "investigation" is laughable. To claim that HRC's team cooperated when they literally (and indisputably) destroyed evidence. And the point is that while she was doing that, the DOJ negotiated for an extended period of time, rather than getting a warrant. And granted immunity. The double standard is clear.

The article you linked to is trash. Comey (and the FBI which you trust so implicitly and unquestionably) specifically found and announced that "110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were "up-classified" to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent."

As an aside, they also "The FBI also discovered several thousand work-related e-mails that were not in the group of 30,000 that were returned by Secretary Clinton to State in 2014." Yet never a search warrant - why?

https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system

The FBI finding has never been disputed by anyone who actually looked at the evidence. The article you linked to, written by a very partisan guy (previously wrote for Salon and is a long time Clinton apologist), doesn't dispute this - it weakly attempts to excuse it. It is plain embarrassing that you would make this claim

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If you want to pretend that the personal emails that were mistakenly deleted by the random IT guy all contained classified information go ahead. There is less than zero evidence of that. What we do have evidence for is the proposition that there was nothing sensitive in the 30,000 emails that were retained and all of which were handed over. As much as you try to pretend like there was a serious national security problem with the emails, there wasn't. As detailed in the article you criticized but have no evidence to counter, Trump's administration had 2 separate investigations (after Comey's initial botched one) and none of them found any criminality. The fact that the people sending Hillary emails may have inadvertently been determined to cross the line in hindsight shows that her private email server (like those of prior secretaries of state and Ivanka) was problematic but isn't the same as known classified information.

Pretending like a search warrant was needed to obtain information from Clinton is ridiculous. Bringing in the fact that other people entered into agreements with the DOJ is completely irrelevant. The DOJ regularly does that with cooperating witnesses and it doesn't in any way reflect on the need for a search warrant.

She lost the election because Comey made a tempest out of a teapot. Take the ill-gotten win and be happy with it. Stop pretending like she was treated generously by the DOJ when the opposite was true.

From the article you mischaracterized:

Quote:

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The accurate and definitive answer is zero although few if any news outlets have informed the public of that startling fact. Moreover, it is a fact that the Trump administration itself confirmed three years ago.

In the recent coverage that references her emails, former FBI Director James Comey is sometimes quoted as saying that of the 33,000 Clinton emails examined by bureau investigators, three had classification markings. That's less than one-hundredth of one percent, and not worth comparing to Trump's malfeasance anyway, but it's still false -- apparently meant to bolster Comey's absurd claim that other Clinton emails were "classified" although never marked as such.

Those three State Department documents were "call sheets," innocuous memos reminding Clinton to make scheduled phone calls. During her FBI interview, investigators showed her one of those memos, reminding her to place a condolence call to the president of Malawi--not exactly a top secret matter. As Comey himself later admitted, any classification marking on that sheet had been wrongly applied.

In short, the three supposedly classified documents attributed to her emails were barely even confidential, let alone secret or subject to the sanctions of the Espionage Act.

Still, the hunting of Hillary never ends and amid regular threats to her by Trump when he was president -- inevitably resumed after the FBI investigation concluded. What has been overlooked is that "her emails" and those of her State Department aides became the target of not one but two departmental probes that picked up where her exoneration by the Justice Department left off.

The first round, which began under Rex Tillerson, Trump's first Secretary of State, opened with an inquiry into a claim of 41 "security incidents" attributed to Clinton and concluded, after months of argument and appeals by her attorneys at Williams & Connolly, that none of those alleged incidents was valid, though she shouldn't have used a private email server. In that respect her conduct was no different from her Republican predecessor, the late Colin Powell, who advised her to use private email, or many officials in the Bush White House, including Karl Rove.

The second State Department review commenced with more fanfare in 2019 under Tillerson's unscrupulous successor Mike Pompeo, who, it is worth noting, soon came under official scrutiny himself for gross and self-serving misuse of State Department resources. By then, the hypocrisy behind Republican indignation over "her emails" had been highlighted by massive, repeated security breaches in the Trump White House, where numerous officials , including Ivanka Trump, unlawfully used private email accounts and normal protective protocols were routinely flouted.

No doubt Pompeo, a veteran of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, hoped to find something, anything to arraign Clinton. But again, in the end, there was zero, zilch, nada. Although the second review began with a July 31, 2019 notice from State Department officials that they "suspected" Clinton might be responsible for 12 classified "spillages," this investigation concluded nine weeks later that she did not "bear any individual culpability" for those incidents.

Again, the overarching absurdity of the State Department and FBI investigations lay in the fact that nearly all of the documents at issue had been classified retroactively meaning they had carried no markings identifying them as such when Clinton handled them. Comey's assertion that documents can somehow be deemed inherently secret, without proper markings or any classification history whatsoever, is extremely dangerous and hostile to the concept of open democratic governance. It is an idea that should never have been entertained by a free press.

Nobody in their right mind would hold Clinton, or any official, to be culpable under those circumstances.

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BearGoggles said:

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4. My statement that Trump is his own worst enemy is not an excuse for anything. As usual, you want to make it so because anyone who stands up for principle can't get in the way of your TDS. And, if anything, that statement is an acknowledgement by me that he may well have stupidly violated that law and that, in any event, he's not even presenting clear arguments.

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It's an artifice to pretend that his criminality isn't the real problem, it's that he's dumb enough to make it worse by being a jerk. The criminality is the real problem. You support Trump and the GOP so you of course like to dance around the substance rather than admit that the GOP is still led by an career criminal.

BearGoggles said:

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As an aside, are you still claiming that Biden is fully cogent and among the smartest presidents? Just checking in on that one.

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When did I say he was "among the smartest presidents?" On the contrary, I've criticized his lifelong lack of intelligence for years. I've never claimed him to be smart, let alone among the smartest presidents. If the universe of presidents was limited to GOP presidents post-Nixon, than yes, he's among the smartest.

Maybe you're the one with dementia if you believe I've said otherwise.

GAME
SET
MATCH.

Dude has a point.

Possessing weed should not be a bigger crime than possessing stolen classified nuclear documents in your basement

— Travis Allen (@TravisAllen02) October 6, 2022

FBI interviewed a Trump employee about any Mar a Lago docs. Not much said.

The FBI then saw subpoenaed video evidence of boxes being moved in/out of his storage room, behind a simple locked closet door.

The FBI then re-interviewed the employee, who sang like a canary, telling FBI tgat the movement of boxes came directly from Trump.

Trump's lawyers said all docs had been returned, based upon information supplied to her.

Trump's explanation?: "They're Mine!"

Indict the SOB!!!

A Trump employee told the FBI about moving boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago to Trump's residence at the specific direction of the former president after a subpoena was received earlier this year for the documents. w/@DevlinBarrett. https://t.co/v8PL4yKcV4

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) October 12, 2022

Ooopsie!

Judge Raymond Dearie suggested assertions of privilege by the ex-president lack evidence for a ruling to be made in his favor.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/18/trump-mar-a-lago-documents-seized-fbi