ChiGoose

Hey! Keep those facts away from their emotions!

I hope they spend all of their time investigating and talking about Hunter Biden. It’s definitely what the average American wants Congress to spend time doing and in no way will make them look bad.

Not a fascist, not rooting for Twitter to fail. I would be happy with Twitter succeeding under Elon. I like Twitter. I don’t have personal animosity against Elon. I am sad that Elon seems intent on destroying the site instead of making it better.

What company has succeeded after shedding ~75% of its workforce within a month?

This is gross.

Maybe, just maybe, people who are really smart at one thing are not smart at all things… https://twitter.com/nitashatiku/status/1593399704636620800?s=46&t=dKLxCFzXUvMUKZsxnGXaQg

That's fine, but in the absence of public court proceedings, I think sworn documents filed with a court should be given more weight than conjecture or statements made to the media. Everything I've seen stated that the FBI conducted the search in plain clothes and were guided around by the Secret Service detail. Additionally, I believe that Mar A Lago was closed the day of the search. I'd be very careful about ascribing a source to leaks. While it is possible that leaks come from the FBI, it's just as possible (if not more likely) that they come from Trump's camp. There's much we don't know about the stage of the investigation but we can apply the facts to the law. For at least 18 USC 2071, all of the elements are met by the known facts of the case. I apologize, I did not mean to be condescending. I just wanted to make clear that traditional media is generally quite poor about reporting on legal news. When I see something involving the law in the news, I generally try to find a story on it from a publication that focuses on the law as opposed to traditional media outlets that might not fully understand the nuances. While the deletion of the emails is a lightning rod in the news and this board, here is what Comey said about it in the context of the FBI's investigation: "I should add here that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them. Our assessment is that, like many e-mail users, Secretary Clinton periodically deleted e-mails or e-mails were purged from the system when devices were changed. Because she was not using a government account—or even a commercial account like Gmail—there was no archiving at all of her e-mails, so it is not surprising that we discovered e-mails that were not on Secretary Clinton’s system in 2014, when she produced the 30,000 e-mails to the State Department." I certainly don't want to be in the position of defending Hillary. I don't care for her, I didn't vote for her, and I blame her for Trump being elected president. But if we're going to criticize her, I'd prefer it for the things she actually did.

Understanding legal news can be challenging and it's why I try to read the actual filings when possible. The affidavit filed by the FBI cites three laws that they are investigating Trump for as well as the timeline of events. It's also important to note that there is a lot of silence (which is being filled in by the talking heads who may or may not actually know what they are talking about) because the DoJ rarely comments on ongoing investigations. The only reason we know about this investigation is because Trump confirmed it himself. So we don't know at what stage the investigation is in. Are we just starting out? In the middle? Close to the end? Tough to say. We can learn a bit through the ongoing filings between the DoJ and Trump in the 11th circuit and Judge Cannon's court, but we won't know much for certain until the DoJ either indicts Trump or announces their declination. In the meantime, I would not look to traditional media sources for good, nuanced reporting on legal matters. Look instead to the boring legal news outlets if you want to stay on top of it. Or read the filings when they are filed (the DoJ usually posts them to their site). Also, this is a long post so I don't want to spend much time on this, but I think you've been misstating the facts of the Hillary investigation.

Do you honestly believe that Russia did not attempt to interfere in the 2016 election?

I would say that believing someone was careless but understanding why the DoJ wouldn’t prosecute them based on case law is entirely consistent with believing someone who intentionally broke the law should be prosecuted based on case law.

Must have been running against a real loser.

The thing I’m more concerned about is that he may have had HUMINT. That’s the sort of thing that can get people killed. Thankfully, if he took the documents for his inflated ego instead of turning them over to the Saudis or selling them, it’s less likely that the information would get into the hands of our enemies. Still, not great.

Good news!

Fun fact: I didn’t vote for Hillary. I thought she was a terrible candidate and then she ended up proving me right. I know I keep repeating myself, but if you actually look at the law, there are stark differences between Hillary and Trump.

Yeah, this isn’t surprising given the recent barrage of Russian missiles. Another example of why we shouldn’t jump to conclusions, especially during a war.

How is this possible? I thought the Dems rigged the AZ election…

The facts of the case would give prosecutors a very easy time proving intent to a jury: Under the PRA, Trump loses all possessory rights to government documents the moment he is no longer president. So at around noon on January 20th, 2021, Trump’s possession of those documents was illegal. Maybe he did not know at that time and intent would be difficult to prove, but NARA sent Trump a notice that he needed to return the documents and he had no right to them. At that point, he was on notice that his possession of the documents was in violation of the law. After this, Trump, through his attorneys, told NARA that he had returned all of the documents when in fact he had not. Hence, the search warrant. So you have someone who took documents they were not entitled to, was told that they couldn’t retain them, and then lied about returning them. Any reasonable jury is going to find intent there.

He intended to posses the documents. That meets the standard under 18 USC § 2071

Ballot harvesting is collecting ballots from multiple people and submitting them. For example, going to a nursing home and collecting people’s ballots and putting them in the ballot drop box. In some states, this is legal. In others, it’s not.

I wonder if he’s just trying to see how much legal exposure he can create for himself

This is true but the question remains if the DoJ has the balls to do anything about it.

I'm sorry, I should have been more clear. His intent to remove the documents matters; what is intent was to do with the documents is not relevant to 18 U.S. Code § 2071, which is one of the statutes from the search warrant. Here is the text of the statute:

Are we talking about the book I recommended or have you hit the pipe pretty hard tonight?

Sure, there is a remote possibility of fraud. And if there was evidence of it, I might consider it as more than a remote possibility. But there is no evidence of it, so I find it hard to believe.