FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024

Carlos De Oliveira has pleaded ( I feel like it should be “pled”) not guilty.

"NOTHING LIKE THIS HAS EVER HAPPENED BEFORE,” Trump said in a post on the social media site Truth Social on Monday. “OUR COUNTRY CAN NEVER LET THIS STAND!” He’s not wrong.

Look in two weeks.

There will just be a note: “I will gladly bribe you Tuesday for a corrupt ruling today. Signed, Not Donald Trump.”

And we all know he won’t pay up.

Signed, Epstein’s mother.

You misspelled “Epstein’s Client”.

Signed, John Barron.

Moderating:

Ok, time to drop the hijack cracks. Thanks.

… the hicracks, iow.

Looking worse for Trump:

Seriously, even a sentence of summary? C’mon, man.

For the lazy (from the article linked above): :wink:

Trump’s main argument for his innocence is that as president, he could declassify whatever material he wanted. His allies had previously argued that he had a “standing declassification order” that would immediately declassify any document removed from the Oval Office. Trump himself claimed he could declassify things “just by thinking about it.”

But Pence and Meadows, two of Trump’s closest advisers in the White House, say differently. “I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents,” Pence told ABC on Sunday.

I was under the impression that classification was not an element of the Florida offense. If they are “national security” documents, he’s guilty (classified or not)

That’s my impression as well. I think this is more of a “we’ve removed one of the jury nullification strategies,” though the media and pundit class are reporting it as though this is just what the prosecution needed to plug up the last hole in their case.

What denotes a “national security” document if not its security classification? (really asking)

" Former Vice President Mike Pence and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Sunday that they had no knowledge of then-President Donald Trump declassifying a large number of documents, completely undermining the former president’s main defense in the Mar-a-Lago case."

Well for one thing, overclassification is a real problem and many things that are classified really shouldn’t be.

I know that’s an argument going the other way, but it’s still true.

But the nature of information in a document is what deems its risk to national security, not the classification of it. Classifying a document is nothing more than putting a label on it, and doesn’t change the nature of the information.

Here is an article explaining it:

“From a legal perspective, classification doesn’t matter. It’s really just: Does it pertain to the national defense?” says Barb McQuade, a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School and the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

I work for state government, and we don’t classify and declassify stuff. We have a classification system, but it’s 100% descriptive. You can’t wave a magic wand and change the nature of data. For example, if a document has social security numbers or personal medical information on it, that’s “restricted confidential” in our system, and nobody can put a stamp on it and change that. Not even the governor. Meanwhile, a blank form that hasn’t been filled out is given the “public” classification, meaning that anyone has the right to see it, because there is nothing sensitive on it. No declaration can change that.

So, the standard that the Espionage Act uses is similar to the same logic that my state government uses; what matters is the nature of the data, not a label someone slapped on it.

You could describe it just a little bit if you’d like someone to click on it. Or you could be lazy. Does it make it cool if I add a smiley face? :slightly_smiling_face:

It seems to me the headline in not just misleading, but thoroughly wrong. I don’t think this hurts Trump’s Defense at all. For this to impact his defense, Trump would have to make a claim, to the court, that he did, in fact, issue standing orders to have documents declassified. To do that, either Trump would have to testify (best evidence) or have someone else testify that those were the orders they were given. It is unlikely, IMHO, that either one of those things will happen.

IIRC, even in the Special Master filings, it was only speculated by the defense that some of the documents may have been declassified (which is, in fact, true. Some may have been, since they didn’t know exactly which documents they had, how could he know?).

Now, perhaps this might affect the case in the Court of Public Opinion, but nobody cares about that since, in the CoPO, Trump has already been totally exonerated (If you don’t believe me, just ask him or his base).

The issue here is Trump is saying he had a standing order to declassify documents. High ranking officials in his administration are saying that never happened.