Robert Barnes funderede
Imagine a government where unelected secret police get to determine what truths are hidden from the people at the expense of the elected executive who is their Constitutional boss. That is what the #TrumpIndictment seeks to establish.
Nå, lad os se lidt køligt på hvad en præsident må, nu Demokraterne truer med 400 års fængsel til Donald Trump.
I 2017 blev Trump beskyldt for at have delt følsom information med ‘russerne’. Det var ikke alle, der var imponerede over den skandale, og den Republikanske senator James Risch sagde “The minute the president speaks about it to someone, he has the ability to declassify anything at any time without any process”. Det satte PolitiFact sig for at finde ud af og skrev bl.a
Experts agreed that the president, as commander in chief, is ultimately responsible for classification and declassification. When people lower in the chain of command handle classification and declassification duties — which is usually how it’s done — it’s because they have been delegated to do so by the president directly, or by an appointee chosen by the president.
The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority.
“The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’” according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. “His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security … flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.”
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to “classify and declassify at will.”
In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia’s Center for National Security Law, said that “if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues.”
The official documents governing classification and declassification stem from executive orders. But even these executive orders aren’t necessarily binding on the president. The president is not “obliged to follow any procedures other than those that he himself has prescribed,” Aftergood said. “And he can change those.”
Indeed, the controlling executive order has been rewritten by multiple presidents. The current version of the order was issued by President Barack Obama in 2009.
The national-security experts at the blog Lawfare wrote in the wake of the Post’s revelation that the “infamous comment” by President Richard Nixon — that “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal” — “is actually true about some things. Classified information is one of them. The nature of the system is that the president gets to disclose what he wants.”
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We found broad agreement that a president, using powers granted by the Constitution, is able to declassify essentially anything. However, experts added that Risch’s comment was not entirely on point for the particular situation involving Trump.
Nej, det er altid noget andet med Trump, som kræver at nogle udvalgte eksperter taler verbost om Jordens undergang. Robert Barnes hævdede præcedens, hvilket vel heller ikke gælder Trump
Bill Clinton had national security information in his sock drawer. Clinton never formally declassified it. When sued to return it to Archives, a federal court dismissed the case. Why? Because by law the President’s mere act of removing the records made them his personal records.
John Solomon uddyber i Just the News
The case in question is titled Judicial Watch v. National Archives and Records Administration and it involved an effort by the conservative watchdog to compel the Archives to forcibly seize hours of audio recordings that Clinton made during his presidency with historian Taylor Branch.
For pop culture, the case is most memorable for the revelation that the 42nd president for a time stored the audio tapes in his sock drawer at the White House. The tapes became the focal point of a 2009 book that Branch wrote.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington D.C. ultimately rejected Judicial Watch’s suit by concluding there was no provision in the Presidential Records Act to force the National Archives to seize records from a former president.
But Jackson’s ruling — along with the Justice Department’s arguments that preceded it — made some other sweeping declarations that have more direct relevance to the FBI’s decision to seize handwritten notes and files Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago. The most relevant is that a president’s discretion on what are personal vs. official records is far-reaching and solely his, as is his ability to declassify or destroy records at will.
“Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion,” Jackson wrote in her March 2012 decision, which was never appealed.
“Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records,” she added.
You can read the full ruling here: memorandum opinion.pdf
The judge noted a president could destroy any record he wanted during his tenure and his only responsibility was to inform the Archives.
As to whether records a president concluded were personal can be forcibly seized after he leaves office, the court concluded it was unreasonable to force NARA to go get the tapes
“Because the audiotapes are not physically in the government’s possession, defendant submits that it would be required to seize them directly from President Clinton in order to assume custody and control over them,” Jackson noted.
“Defendant considers this to be an ‘extraordinary request’ that is unfounded, contrary to the PRA’s express terms, and contrary to traditional principles of administrative law. The Court agrees.”
That defendant was the same Justice Department that authorized the raid on Trump’s estate. You can read their arguments a decade earlier here: Hearing Transcript.pdf
Jackson also concluded that a decision to challenge a president’s decision lies solely with the National Archives and can’t be reviewed by a court. If the Archives wants to challenge a decision, that agency and the attorney general can initiate an enforcement mechanism under the law, but it is a civil procedure and has no criminal penalty, she noted.
The search warrant the FBI enforced sought two types of records: classified materials and records created during the Trump presidency. Trump has been adamant the records he took to Mar-a-Lago were both declassified and deemed personal by him.
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On the classification issue, both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama signed executive orders — which remain in force to this day — declaring that presidents have sweeping authority to declassify secrets and do not have to follow the mandatory declassification procedures all other government officials do.
The Jackson ruling and the declassification powers have left some experts worried the FBI raid was heavy-handed under the current laws.
Kevin Brock, former assistant FBI director for intelligence, told Just the News the bureau’s search warrant was overly broad and went beyond what the FBI manual for agents recommended. “Specificity is important in order to protect fourth amendment rights from exuberant government overreach designed to find whatever they can,” he told Just the News.
Brock added he did not believe DOJ and FBI had authority to criminalize the retention of presidential records.
The warrant “apparently makes a novel legal assertion that any presidential record kept by a former president is against the law,” Brock said. “You have to wonder what the other living former presidents think about that. They have the right and, apparently, clear desire to remain silent.”
Jonathan Turley påpeger et problem for Trump
The problem for the defense is that it must run the table on all 37 counts. The government clearly count-stacked to maximize the chances of a conviction. With a 76-year-old client, the defense attorneys have to play a perfect game. Even one conviction on these counts could bring a sentence of 10 to 12 years.
Moreover, the indictment is full of legal jump-scares in the form of pictures and transcripts. Like most people, jurors are visual creatures. Pictures of potentially classified documents being stored next to the commode will leave a lasting impression.
Most damaging is the audiotape that is transcribed in the indictment. On the tape, Trump tells two individuals interviewing him for a book that he has a classified Department of Defense document regarding an attack on Iran. Trump admits that it is secret and “as president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t.”
This is damaging on various levels. For one thing, it contradicts his prior claims to have declassified all of the documents. It also suggests that the government has a motive for trial.
Although many pundits bizarrely claimed that Trump was intending to sell classified material, the government suggests a more straightforward motive: The documents were trophies for Trump. The indictment portrays him as bragging about his possession of the attack plan.
Uha, så Trump har måske fremvist en uaktuel angrebsplan til en eller anden skriverkarl. Dershowitz er enig i, at optagelsen hvor Trump vifter med fortrolige papirer er det mest belastende
Those paragraphs refer to Trump allegedly showing an unidentified writer, publisher, and staff members a “highly confidential” plan to attack a country.
U.S. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was quoted in a news story on July 15, 2021, as fighting to stop Trump from ordering an attack on Iran.
Six days later, Trump showed the writer and publisher what he described as a “plan of attack” from the same general.
“Isn’t this amazing? This totally wins my case, except it is like, highly confidential,” Trump is quoted as saying in the indictment.
“As president, I could have declassified it. Now I can’t but this is still a secret,” he was also quoted as saying.
The indictment charges Trump with various crimes, including illegally disclosing national defense information.
Det er korrumperet juristeri mod Trumps politiske tæft.
“We’re going to have to hear an exception from Trump’s lawyers or from Trump as to how we can justify having shown to somebody who doesn’t have security clearance allegedly some information about a plan to attack Iran,” Dershowitz said on Newsmax.
None of the people shown the document held a security clearance, U.S. authorities say.
Trump “may claim he didn’t show it to them, just kind of waved it in front of them as part of bragging but that’s something that will have to be explained,” Dershowitz said. “When you have a tape in the voice of the defendant himself it’s hard to dispute, so I think this is a serious indictment on these two charges. Everything else I think was exactly what we expected,” he also said.
Over for dette juridiske ævle bævle står den politiske historie: Den dybe stat, her ved det militærindustrielle kompleks, lægger hele tiden planer om nye angrebskrige, som Trump forhindrer, til generalernes store fortrydelse. Hvilken historie står stærkest hos hr og fru Amerika? Det var netop opgøret med Den Dybe Stat og Amerika Først, der bragte Trump ind i Det Hvide Hus. Nu vil den dybe stat straffe Trump for at repræsenteret Folket.
Det er også ret sjovt at Biden regeringen, hvis politik over for Rusland har bragt os det tætteste på en atomkrig siden Cubakrisen, finder tid til at anklage Trump for at være en sikkerhedsrisiko, for ikke at ville invadere Iran.
Der findes ikke generiske angrebsplaner for de forskellige lande, som var der kun en militær løsning på enhver situation. Selv Schlieffenplanen var under konstant revidering. Der satses igen på lav informations vælgere, der skal bedrages af medierne.
Tilfældigvis har jeg også set den angrebsplan Trump viftede med og kan afsløre, at hvis USA angreb Iran, vil de først blokere al elektronisk kommunikation, de kan komme afsted med. Dernæst vil de bombe alle radaranlæg, antiluftskyts-installationer og alle militære luftbaser. Når dette er nedkæmpet, vil de bombe al strategisk infrastruktur… hvordan klarer jeg mig, piger?
Here’s a question that hasn’t been asked: how is it OK for Gen. Mark Milley to leak to the media that Trump supposedly ordered an attack on Iran, but not OK for Trump to leak to the media in response? Is anyone going to prosecute Milley for leaking national defense information?
Svaret er, at det er forbudt at forhindre The Interagency Consensus at starte nye krige og så oven i købet prale med det, så andre kan få ideen om at det faktisk kan lade sig gøre. Tillykke med valget Donald!
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