It’s not logistically possible, no matter how “organized” they are.
She is. Because nothing Trump has been charged with is anything any other president has done, and relates entirely to deliberate mishandling of those documents and deliberate obstruction to prevent their return, on a scale never seen before.
Claiming that the criminal charges are unprecedented without acknowledging that the criminal acts are unprecedented is leaving out critical context.
Do you have any idea how disruptive it is to have a US President visiting a particular location? I do, because several have visited Ottawa in my life, and I’ve seen it up close. They close roads, take over whole buildings, and sometimes even weld the manhole covers shut, to prevent pop-up assassins and the like.
Embassies are working buildings, that serve all sorts of people all day, every day. You’d have to shut all that down for the duration of the President’s stay. Far better to shut down a hotel instead.
I expect that the ambassador has a government-provided residence with a guest bedroom.
There has to be a limit to presidential security, and the limit should be where the public is significantly inconvenienced. What if the president is sentenced to prison? If the Secret Service has its way, Trump will be above the law.
I’m not sure what Bove replied but I think it’s clear that it’s a law like paying your taxes. The right to prosecute you exists to force compliance as you increasingly display a disregard for your lawful obligations. As evidence mounts of ill-intent, there eventually becomes a point where a reasonable person would conclude that the individual had no intention to pay their taxes and, at that point, they should be prosecuted.
The very fact Cannon asked the question is a giant red flag about her impartiality. Once the judge starts parrotting the defense’s media talking points that bear no relevance to the legal case before them, theres a huge issue.
With not paying taxes, the offense gets worse every day, because of interest due.
With state secrets, it gets less important every day because the confidential information becomes stale.
If either Trump or Biden cared about document security, they would do what I did when I was a government employee at home during COVID — print out nothing, take all notes on a government-secured computer, and bring home nothing except if I am absolutely sure it is a public document. This was a pain, and a reason I stayed home as briefly as practical.
I get that presidents think they are too busy for that, and that only having one residence is unacceptably plebeian, and that they must stay in a five star hotel suite, not some dinky spare bedroom. But the imperial presidency is a problem itself. I seriously think that if Biden had differentiated himself from the likes of Trump by ditching imperial trappings, we wouldn’t need this case to stop DJT, because Average Joe Biden would actually be popular.
P.S. I did not have a security clearance, but did have a clearance to review private client information. Now I am retired.
Well, we hardly need another reason. However, the purpose of the prosecution is not to sway voters, but to hold wrongdoers accountable and deter others. The obstruction of legitimate government efforts to collect these documents is a very serious crime, and I’m having a hard time understanding your defense of this guy here.
Judge Cannon asked both sides to prepare two sets of jury instructions. Is this usual? Do judges ask plaintiff and defendant lawyers to write their (the judge’s) jury instructions?
Yes. Having the lawyers draft jury instructions is very typical. Ultimately the Judge picks the best one, or merges them, etc and presents them to the Jury.
You can read the draft ones here, but there is generally two parts to Jury Instructions:
(1) These are the elements to the crime, did Defendant do all the criminal acts w/wilfull intent, if so he committed the crime. (Ex, Did Trump wilfully retain documents - Yes or No). You generally break the crime up into a couple elements each with a “Yes or No”. So, Did Trump wilfully retain the documents; if so, were the documents related to national security; if so, did he do it without authorization; The order might be different but like that. If you get all Yes’s then the jury determined he committed the crime.
(2) The other part is providing definitions for the charged crime to help the jury understand what the words mean, this part can be long. What does “authorization” mean? The Judge (informed by the lawyers) will provide their definitions of what that means. Ex…In the above jury instruction, authorization means…(long definition).
The unusual part here is drafting instructions about the Presidential Records Act in an Espionage Act case. Trump is trying to push the PRA into the second part of jury instructions, the definitions, into this Espionage Act case by using language from the PRA (and just making stuff up about the PRA). So, in Trumps definition part of the jury charge regarding whether Trump was authorized to have the documents, Trump’s definition of authorization goes into the PRA and claims if the jury determines the documents were his personal records then the jury should find that Trump was authorized to have them and he did not violate the Espionage Act since he must retain the docs w/o authorization.
The DOJ says there is no need to inform the jury of any of that unrelated PRA stuff, it’s completely wrong to do so, cannot fathom why Judge Cannon is even entertaining these draft jury instructions re the PRA, and if she does it she’s basically writing instructions for the jury to acquit Trump.
I don’t believe that, that’s an accurate way to view it.
To be sure, your idea that if you graph the value of the content of state secrets, that value decreases with time. But that’s not the only graph and the overall image is the composite of all of those graphs.
For one, not all information is a state secret. In this bucket, at minimum, I know that there is at least 1) information that is useful for researchers, historians, etc. and 2) information that would be useful to the next administration.
In the case of the first, the value over time will vary. In Trump’s case, where he plans to run for office again, making information available to the public as quickly as possible is necessary, so that we can properly analyze it and make a determination on how well he governed, before asking whether we want to hire him again. As we approach election day, the harm caused by its loss increases. If we do hire him again and it’s determined that the information contains incriminating evidence, that would invalidate the Presidency, then that’s of extreme value through the duration of his term of service. This information becomes more “for historic interest only” as the second term is finished.
In the case of the second, delay in getting that information will hamper the efficacy of the new administration. They need to make a determination on whether they can get that information back or whether they need to regenerate the lost information - sending out agents, running analysis, etc. It’s a burden on the government and on the taxpayer. In general, we’d view the graph as a left skew normal curve. It grows quickly and then slowly trails off in importance as the information is recreated or the opportunity to make use of that information is lost. In the case that the opportunity was lost, even though there’s no value in restoring the information, there was a wound inflicted on the country that could have long-lasting consequences.
Now, to come back to the case of state secrets. One thing that we should note is that saying that “the information becomes less valuable with time” overlooks that some information can stay very valuable for a very long time. If we know that Dictator A has a fondness for young boys, and that secret would likely lead to a coup, execution, and being replaced with some other horrible tyrant, then we have a blackmail mechanism against A that will keep him from ever going forward with genocides, attacking his neighbors, etc. Maybe we can’t get him to step down, but we have the ability to manage his horribleness, for decades.
If we have a known flaw in our missile defense capabilities, and the tech to correct it simply won’t be available for decades, then keeping the lid on that flaw will remain vital to national security for decades.
As time goes on with a state secret, and it sits out in the open, the opportunity for it to leak grows exponentially. If the particular information will stay relevant for a long period, then again we’re looking at a left skew normal curve.
But, that’s still all dealing with the content of the secret. If it’s information that we received through a confidential source, for example, then it’s not just the content that matters. A source might still be in place to collect information for us decades later and any evidence that could lead to their identification would damage the value of all other secrets gained and remove the opportunity for future information. Assuming that the average source is liable to rise through the ranks, the value of their information is liable to grow over time.
On average, the value of information is going to rise quickly and then slowly start to decrease in value. But the period of high usefulness might plausibly last many years and decades.
I wouldn’t be so impertinent as to question either Donald Trump, Judge Aileen Cannon, or Trump’s esteemed legal counsel, but I would like to offer up the definitions of “Presidential Records” and “Personal Records” as delineated by the Presidential Records Act of 1978:
[It’s really just “§ 2201. Definitions” that I’m talking about]
(“Let’s see. This is my diary. That’s a picture of me golfing with Chief Justice Roberts and Lindsey Graham. And then there’s this little Love note that General Milley wrote me, quixotically titled, “If I Were To Invade Iran””).
She used part of her order dismissing trump’s attempt to get the trial thrown out to chide Jack Smith for having the temerity to all her to make an official order when it comes to the PRA kerfluffle.
"
…the Court declines that demand as unprecedented and unjust."
As mentioned above, Judge Cannon denied Trump’s PRA Motion to Dismiss. Order here. It basically says DOJ correctly laid out the elements and supporting facts of the Espionage Act, and that the Presidential Records Act is not part of those elements. So motion dismissed.
The last paragraph has nothing to do with the dismissal. It’s separate and a direct response to Jack. It’s about the jury instructions. Cannon says she was just trying to figure out the law, nothing more. She makes no ruling one way or the other about the jury instructions. You can make of this what you will. Personally, I think Jack’s motion was extremely strong and blasted Cannon (with good reason) and the Judge just wants to get in the last word so to speak. It also makes it very hard for Jack to “appeal” anything to the 11th at this point regarding those hypothetical jury instructions (and since the PRA Motion was denied).