Donald Trump indicted on 7 counts in classified documents probe

Finally, the DOJ is moving on Donald Trump's foolish attempt to overthrow our elected government.

It has been a while. Trump's insurrection scheme began in November 2020.

CNN reports, "Special counsel Jack Smith has compelled at least two Republican fake electors to testify to a federal grand jury in Washington in recent weeks by giving them limited immunity, part of a current push by federal prosecutors to swiftly nail down evidence in the sprawling criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

"The testimony, described to CNN by people familiar with the situation, comes after a year of relative dormancy around the fake electors portion of the investigation and as a parade of related witnesses are being told to appear before the grand jury with no chance for delay.

"That activity could signal that investigators are nearing at least some charging decisions in a part of the 2020 election probe, sources added. It also comes just as the special counsel’s office filed charges against former President Donald Trump for his handling of classified documents.

"Prosecutors have played hardball with some of the witnesses in recent weeks, refusing to grant extensions to grand jury subpoenas for testimony and demanding they comply before the end of this month, sources said. In the situations where prosecutors have given witnesses immunity, the special counsel’s office arrived at the courthouse in Washington ready to compel their testimony after the witnesses indicated they would decline to answer questions under the Fifth Amendment.

"Prosecutors have also continued to focus on potential financial crimes and money laundering after Trump raised millions of dollars off false claims the election was stolen.

"In recent weeks, the special counsel’s office has also shown interest in several members of Trump’s post-election legal team who promoted baseless claims of widespread voter fraud, including his former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, as well as former Justice Department appointee Jeffrey Clark, who tried to help Trump’s push to use the Department of Justice to overturn the election."

The inherent problem with Trump is a lack of intelligence coupled with a sincere belief that he is immune from our nation's law. Recently, Trump has found this is not the case. Still, Republicans in Congress and those running for President defend him.

Go figure!

I don't understand that, either, but apparently, the forum's Republicans do as evidenced by their silence on this matter.

 

Oh, my.
84 witnesses that Trump has the names of.
It's going to be real interesting to see if he and his little soldiers can refrain from witness tampering.


'Special counsel asks for December trial date for Trump in Mar-a-Lago documents case'
Source: CNN

'The special counsel’s office has asked for Donald Trump to be tried in December in the Mar-a-Lago documents matter, because of how classified records must be handled carefully within the criminal case.'

'The special counsel’s office also said in a court filing Friday night that it has given Turmp and Nauta the list of witnesses with whom they should not discuss the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Trump’s team indicated the list is 84 names long, according to the court filing.

Prosecutors provided the list to Trump’s team on Thursday, the filing said, and now wants the court to have the list as well under seal. Trump’s team could still argue against some names on the list.'


Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/23/politics/trump-federal-trial-date-special-counsel/index.html

 

1. No the person you address is not assuming, the actual law states so.

2. Why do you come on this forum and ask what the law is and then go on to misrepresent it?

3. The law could not be any more clear. Once a President is no longer President, any documents he had as President are no longer his, they belong to the state and held in trust by the National Archives.

4. No Trump did NOT and could not declassify the documents he took with him.

5. No a President does not act in a vacuum in office and after office simply using his "discretion".

6. There is no legal concept giving a President unlimited powers you call "discretion". To suggest any President let alone Trump can break laws and do whatever they want makes no sense. Everything a President does is limited in scope of its power and its application because of checks and balances in the very laws you do not want to acknowledge.

7.Could you please stop inventing non existent powers of Trump and go read the laws you refuse to acknowledge-they exist to prevent any President from doing what he feels like. No the US is not Putin in Russia.

Please make an effort to find out your country's laws.

 

Ok, get back to me when you give me the number of times the word discretion appears in the law: the PRA.

If you found that task easy, perhaps you could give the number of times it appears in rulings of the major cases in which the PRA was the primary applicable law.

So long as you completely ignore major portions of the law, and prior cases, applicable to this case, the discussion cannot proceed.

 

Trump wasn't charged under the PRA.
He was charged under the Espionage Act.

 

This is a concise legal explanation of all Trump and his devotees got wrong.

The Presidential Records Act, Clinton's Socks, and Trump's Boxes
By Eric Columbus
Wednesday, June 21, 2023, 11:15 AM

https://www.lawfareblog.com/presidential-records-act-clintons-socks-and-trumps-boxes#:~:text=The Presidential Records Act “does,President of the United States.”

 

There has been a law passed, the entirety of which concerns a single citizen's handling of documents, but it isn't applicable to this particular handling of documents by that citizen? That sounds preposterous to me.

 

Interesting as always hearing Cohen's take on Trump and family.
Documents,Saudi-golf and more

 

Cohen has as much credibility as Mary Trump - nothing either says has any relavance

 

Right.
Cohen,Trumps old partner in crime for 12 yrs has no idea how Trump and his family operate and why.
You funny!

 

Nah, it concerns WHO OWNS GOV'T PROPERTY. You know since the US had to pay that other GOP criminal Nixon $18 million to get US Gov't property back. Every US Prez from FDR to LBJ gave up US Gov't PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS to the Gov't, because they were official records of doing a job. Nixon decided they were his. Congress chose to enshrine in law, US GOV'T DOCS USED IN PERFORMING THE JOB WERE GOV'T PROPERTY!


''The government has reached a settlement agreement to pay former President Richard Nixon's estate $18 million for his presidential papers, tape recordings and other materials, the Justice Department announced today. In 1992, a federal court of appeals had ruled that the estate was entitled to be paid the fair value of those materials. The Nixon family at one point had asked that the papers be sold to the United States for up to $35 million plus 25 years of interest, which would have brought the asking price to more than $200 million.

"It's our belief that presidential papers belong to all the American people," said David W. Ogden, Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Department's Civil Division. "This settlement brings to a close 20 years of litigation surrounding President Nixon's papers. Given the Court of Appeals decision, this is a fair resolution for the American taxpayer."

The Nixon papers and tapes were acquired by the government under a law enacted by Congress in 1974, to prevent the destruction of any "Watergate" related material. In 1978 Congress enacted the Presidential Records Act to ensure that the papers of all future Presidents are the property of the American public. The Nixon papers are located and will remain at the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland.

https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2000/June/336civ.htm

 

I'm telling you what the two GOP nutjobs said it said on the forms, take it up with them

 

The good thing is that none of the Christian stooges in the audience asked him to explain.


“I’m being indicted for you and I believe the you is more than 200 million people that love our country,” he added.'

 

Presidential Records only applies to records CREATED by the President - not those generated by other agencies for the President to read.

Trump is being charged under the Espionage Act and for Obstruction of Justice (Ignoring and thwarting a subpoena).

 

The CDC and other agencies are keeping much about COVID classified. Doesn’t Biden have the authority right now to request any document related to that? Where is the law that says he must return the document at some point, like a library book, and if he doesn't, these penalties apply?

 

@Daniel Light is completely correct. The Presidential Records Act has nothing to do with AGENCY records, such as CIA records. nothing in the Act give the President the ability to make agency records PERSONAL records. Even if he declassified them, they wouldn't be personal records and he would still have to return them.

Where is the law that says he must return the document at some point? He had no legal right to have them after he left office. AND THERE WAS A SUBPOENA. The whole point of the subpoena was to give him a deadline, which he could have challenged if he actually believed he had the legal right to have the documents. He's an idiot. Even his whole PRA theory came from someone who wasn't even a lawyer and his lawyers told him this guy was full of ****.

 

The Presidential Records Act states and I quote:

“Upon the conclusion of a President’s term of office, or if a President serves consecutive terms upon the conclusion of the last term, the Archivist of the United States shall assume responsibility for the custody, control, and preservation of, and access to, the Presidential records of that President.”

That could not be any more clear and no it is not qualified with any wording to the contrary giving Trump discretion to ignore the above which is precisely why you made a ridiculous unspecified reference to discretion without relating it to any wording in the Presidential Records Act.

Next if you in fact had a statute where you think the word "discretion" is used to give Trump the power to do whatever he wants let alone do whatever he wants with public documents why did you not provide it.

You in fact made an absurd vague reference to no law at all and the word discretion because it does not exist in the Presidential Records Act or any law to allow Trump to have done what he did with his documents. Even Trump admitted this in his comments.

Stop the bullshit reference to discretion without referring to what law you removed it from that is just ridiculous.

Provide the exact law and reference of discretion you think says Trump could do what he did with the documents after he left office. If you can't you not I need to stop as you are just wasting your breath making meaningless statements with no basis.

 

Even with all of that, the PRA doesn't apply to agency documents. Even IF Trump did have a good argument for presidential records under the PRA . . . it doesn't cover agency records. It doesn't cover CIA records, etc. It covers records that he created. He's toast.

 

Let us make perfectly clear what the Presidential Records Act in fact states.

1-The Presidential Records Act defines what constitutes personal materials — such as diaries or political campaign documents — from official records. It does not give the president “sole discretion” in determining what is and is not a personal record. Under the law, a departing president is required to separate personal documents from official records before leaving office.

2-The Presidential Records Act does not establish a process of negotiation between the president and the archives.

3-In fact Trump DID issue a memorandum on the day before leaving office declassifying information related to the F.B.I. investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia so he demonstrated he knew what the procedure was he then chose to break after. Here is another example of Trump properly following the procedures he now argues do not exist:https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.go...lated-fbis-crossfire-hurricane-investigation/

4- In fact the classification of information related to nuclear weapons or “restricted data” is governed by a the Atomic Energy Act which does not explicitly give the president the authority to declassify nuclear secrets unilaterally and establishes a strict process for declassification that involves several agencies.

5- If Trump’s current defense is that if he did truly declassify the documents he claimed he did simply by thinking this because of his "discretionary power" , then legally they would be obtainable bow by the public and are publishable? So why does Trump keep them to himself? If documents are declassified no one has exclusive ownership of them anymore let alone Trump.

6-In fact no statute provides any President the right to keep documents. Globalcitizen has misrepresented Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision which stated under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president's term and in the president's sole discretion.

Removing personal materials from Presidential records does NOT and never provided discretion for Trump to take with him NON personal materials and this is precisely why unlike Globalcitizen he has done a double turn away from his "discretionary power" argument which has no legal basis to making the ridiculous argument he kept documents that he admits did NOT belong to him because he had personal material mixed with them and he had no time to separate them. This is absurd. At no time did he state in his affidavits claiming he had NO documents this matter. If he was withholding documents for this reason he would have indicated this in his affidavit. He is such an idiot that when he makes up after the fact excuses he does not understand they do not address the very misleading statements he made in his affidavit!

More to the point when Trump tries to misrepresent the above case, he ignores the actual fact that in 2010, the conservative group Judicial Watch sued the National Archives and Records Administration, arguing audio tapes kept by Clinton for interviews he did with historian Taylor Branch during his years in office were defined as "presidential records" and had to be made available to the public and so the very Judge who he tries to hide behind to justify keeping public records in fact ruled the exact opposite!

Bottom line and no one has argued otherwise, The Presidential Records Act does contain an exception for personal records such as "diaries, journals, and other personal notes that were never used in the transaction of government business.

The attempt by pro Trump partisans to misrepresent the law is tiresome.





"Judge Amy Berman Jackson's decision states under the statutory scheme established by the Presidential Records Act, the decision to segregate personal materials from presidential records is made by the president during the president's term and in the president's sole discretion," Trump said.

 

The definition of "presidential records" is:

https://www.archives.gov/about/laws...5.1646917057.1687809208-2041152287.1687807668

 

Yep, and agency documents aren't covered from what I've read. I think there is also already a settled court case about that. Basically, CIA documents and the like don't really count as "presidential records."

 

Which leads us to the Espionage Act which I will pass on for now.

 

Judge Aileen Cannon is moving right along in the Donald Trump criminal case.

CNN reports, "The first hearing for Donald Trump and the special counsel’s office before Judge Aileen Cannon in the Mar-a-Lago documents case will be in Fort Pierce, Florida, on July 14.

"The hearing is set to discuss pretrial issues around classification, with Cannon on Monday granting a request from special counsel Jack Smith that she hold the hearing under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

"Trump and his co-defendant Walt Nauta are not required to be present at the hearing, according to the new court order, though it is the first time their defense teams are set to appear before Cannon.

"Additionally, Cannon ordered on Monday that the defendants respond by July 6 to the special counsel’s request that the trial be delayed until December.

"The defendants’ attorneys “confirmed they do not oppose an adjournment of the current trial date.

"Cannon previously scheduled the trial to begin in mid-August, but it was widely expected the start date would be pushed back.

"Trump is facing charges of willful retention of national defense information, obstruction, and false statements in the federal investigation into the handling of classified documents from his White House. He has pleaded not guilty. Nauta, who faces obstruction-related charges, is scheduled for an arraignment on Tuesday, where he will have the opportunity to enter his plea."

In the meantime, Trump is the Republican choice for the Presidency!

I wonder why there are no Republican responses to my informative reports.

 

Section 2202 of the Act blows out of the water Trumps claims recently that he (as a Former President) is the legal owner of the documents found in his possession! And the more he keeps talking in public about the case the bigger the hole he keeps digging for himself. Sadly (for him) he cant seem to stop himself talking about it.

 

CNN has the audio of Trump!

"CNN has exclusively obtained the audio recording of the 2021 meeting in Bedminster, New Jersey, where President Donald Trump discusses holding secret documents he did not declassify." https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/26/politics/trump-classified-documents-audio/index.html

I just heard it. Trump knew he was being recorded. This proves one thing.

Trump is a total dumbass!