The bizarre claims emerging in the Trump documents case
Jazz Shaw
Wow. The entire Trump classified documents story really took some wild turns on my day off, none of them involving any good news. As Ed pointed out yesterday, the charges against the former President are far more damning than we had originally imagined. In fact, even with a Trump-appointed judge hearing it, Trump’s lawyers may be unable to get the charges dismissed and he could well be convicted… eventually. (That may become important later.)
I understand why Beege is angry and frustrated over this. Trump did this to himself and allowed himself to be taped while admitting he knew it was wrong. But the lopsided claims about this case showing up in the press are quickly turning the entire thing into a circus. To be fair, the coverage from right-wing media outlets, particularly the Fox News primetime lineup, has been totally off the mark. It has been assumed that Trump’s documents were little more than an assortment of vanity news clippings or personal communications. But he allegedly really did have documents dealing with nuclear materials and war plans against (presumably) Iran. And he showed them to people who had no right to see them. This is serious business.
Oddly, the bureaucrats at the National Archives took the unprecedented step of weighing in on the case, as reported by CNN.
The National Archives is pushing back on claims made by former President Donald Trump, his lawyers and his allies over his retention of classified documents, for which he now faces a federal indictment.
On Friday, the Archives took the rare step of releasing a public statement rebuking claims suggesting that Trump was allowed to keep classified materials under the Presidential Records Act.
“Recent media reports have generated a large number of queries about Presidential records and the Presidential Records Act (PRA). The PRA requires that all records created by Presidents (and Vice-Presidents) be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) at the end of their administrations,” according to the statement released by the National Archives on Friday afternoon.
I’ve done a bit of digging and I was unable to find a single statement from the National Archives about Joe Biden’s mountain of classified documents scattered around the country in various locations. Nor did they weigh in on the controversies surrounding Hillary Clinton’s private email server back in 2016. But for some reason, they felt compelled to jump on the dogpile surrounding Trump. So be it, I suppose.
Another laughable CNN headline describes Biden’s “legal and normal documents collection” at the University of Delaware. CNN takes a stab a minimizing any potential Biden crimes by pointing out that the documents are from Biden’s term as a Senator and were therefore the property of the Senate, not the executive branch. That’s true, but as Jonathan Turley pointed out in Ed’s article, any government documents that discuss classified material are still classified documents, even if there is no stamp applied. The same goes for Hillary’s emails. It will take ages to find out if any (or how many) of Biden’s documents fall into that category. CNN also limits their coverage to only the documents in the University of Delaware office, making no mention of the piles located in Joe’s garage and elsewhere. (Insert your own Frank Zappa reference here.)
more
https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2023/06/10/the-bizarre-claims-emerging-in-the-trump-documents-case-n556995
