FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago

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If it can be proven. (Which the article just states that a D-House Member makes disputed assertions.) Then prosecute him too.

We’ve had multiple administrations thumb their nose at laws on the use of private email accounts to conduct public business. The Trump admin did it, Hillary did it, and perhaps W was the originator in doing it in a widespread fashion: Bush White House email controversy - Wikipedia

It’s certainly wrong, and yet it does keep happening because both sides appreciate the ability to hide some of their dealings from public scrutiny. No one generally gets much more than a scolding.

We’ll see what comes of this Trump raid. Like I said, I hope this raid wasn’t just for mishandling of classified documents and/or stealing things that belong to the office of the presidency. He’s stupid enough to do either and publicly boast about it, and it’s fine to punish him but it’s relatively small potatoes unless something more is there. I’m imagining they were looking for specific documents that are part of another investigation, but we’ll probably have to wait a while to find out.

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Do we know for certain at this point that the raid is ONLY about Trump taking classified documents he shouldn’t have taken?

Or is there the possibility that those documents (or others mentioned in the search warrant, if any exist) contain evidence of other illegal activities, possibly related to January 6?

I thought this started as a 1/6/21 thing. I have admittedly not been glued to the TV all day so maybe I’m missing something.

No, we do not as far as I know. We know that’s part of it, but we don’t know specifically what documents the warrant was looking for.

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Well Trump could tell us since he received the warrant but I’m sure he’ll do that two weeks after he unveils his health care plan or releases his tax returns.

But from what I gather this was specifically related to White House Document retention laws and not directly related to January 6th. Of course the documents that he (allegedly) took might implicate him in January 6th stuff but that I think is secondary. I could be wrong.

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I don’t have a big issue with it in general. It should stop, but is it criminal? I only mention it due to the Trump administration hypocrisy on the issue. And if anything, anyone doing it after Hillary, should be more to blame, as it was now well known.

IFYP

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Naw, W may have caught a tiny amount of flak for it if you were really paying attention, but Hillary’s was non-stop national (maybe international?) news for months on end.

I’d not heard about W doing it until… probably this thread. It’s easy to believe that he did, but I wasn’t aware of it and I bet a lot of others weren’t / aren’t either.

I don’t think anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to the 2016 election could have possibly missed that HRC did it.

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It’s not just random documents. Some of the material is classified and could have national security implications. Trump has consistently mishandled this type of info from day 1 of his administration so it’s not surprising. The most generous narrative is that he’s just sloppy and doesn’t care about that stuff, but apparently he’s notorious for tearing stuff up and flushing things down the toilet. Not suspicious at all. Totally normal behavior.

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I thought the missing 15 boxes of stuff were recovered in February via discussions with Trump/lawyers and National Archives.

Hillary’s was non-stop due to the continued recycling of the story for months on right wing media. Her conduct was indeed improper, but they got a year’s worth of news out of that. I agree the actions of the W administration didn’t get nearly as much attention, but it was certainly a national story for a while. Because Karl Rove basically used that server exclusively, it was also a component of both the lawyergate scandal and the Valerie Plame scandal. It just wasn’t repeated ad nauseum for a year by the media.

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When I’ve heard about that pattern of behavior, it’s struck me as being the Executive equivalent of one possible manifestation of a toddler’s temper-tantrum. (“I don’t like this, so I’m going to make it go away in the most disrespectful way I can think of.”)

To be clear, politicians do need a separate email account for campaign business as they should not use government resources to campaign. Of course anyone with any sense also maintains a personal email account rather than having their personal emails on company servers.

I’m not defending the media’s coverage of Hillary or lack of coverage for W. I was responding to the notion that anyone was aware of the issue after W did it because it was well-known by then. I don’t think that’s true.

Ooof. You need some help up there Twig?

There was nowhere close to the same amount of press coverage for W as for Hillary. The Politifact article cites 200 newspaper articles vs 1700. That’s a factor of 8.5.

Yes, it is almost like there was some other reason why rightwing media contuied to fuel the attacks on Clinton while choosing to actually employ the other criminal.

Fair and balanced coverage that has lead us to where we are.

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I have said Hillary’s emails got way more and longer coverage. I’m disputing that no one knows about W because it wasn’t covered. It got hundreds of national articles at the time. That’s a lot. I imagine you don’t remember it because it was your guy so it was no big deal.