Even if it’s your car that does not give you free rein to hide documents that are responsive to a subpoena, destroy evidence of you hiding those documents, and trick your lawyer into signing a false statement that you have complied with the subpoena. Those are crimes no matter who owns the car.
FBI Search and Seizure at Trump's Mar-A-Lago Residence, August 8, 2022, Case Dismissed July 15, 2024
It wouldn’t be me who needs to be reminded of that. It would be Aileen Cannon 
But here’s the thing…Even if it’s your car, and I’m just an asshole trying to steal it from you using the police and courts, doing what Trump did would still be crimes.
The police show up to your door, “Excuse me, we have reports that you have a stolen 1983 Mazda in your garage, can we take a look”?
“What are you talking about? I don’t have any cars in my garage, in fact, I don’t even own a car!”
“Okay, fine, we’ll come back with a warrant to search your garage for cars.”
“Fine, whatever.” >Calls George down the block< “Hey, George, I need you to come to my place, and drive my 1983 Mazda a couple of blocks away, the cops are looking for it.”
Those are still crimes. You’re deliberately interfering with a police investigation, and hiding evidence. That the investigation would have cleared you if you’d not lied and deceived the cops is irrelevant. You’re still making the cops jump through hoops, and delaying the day they find out that I’m actually the real criminal here.
May I respectfully refer you to post #7987
Oh sure, post while I’m typing. That’s a crime too!
You are a smart, well-informed person. On this board, your readers include equally smart, well-informed people. You know the above is true, and we do as well.
The problem is trusting the greater mass of the idiot public to understand the distinction based on the information they’re receiving from the idiot media.
And the narrative there is basically “Trump had hisself some sekrit papers and so did Biden, hur hurr, what a co nun drum we got here.”
I don’t know how we batter down the wall of stupidity and ignorance and get people to fully grasp that Trump is not on trial for accidentally, or even negligently, stuffing some classified material into a packing box at the eleventh hour, like dozens of equivalent politicians and bureaucrats before him. Until that happens, though, the facts are largely immaterial in the court of public opinion.
[bolding mine]
ISWYDT.
Every document that was stolen is considered compromised. Or better be.
Trump ADMIRES Putin and Kim Jong Un, and will do anything to get into an ‘inner circle’ and will do anything for a buck. Some of those documents where stored in a bathroom with a copy machine, which is, of course, where anyone would keep boxes of top secret documents /s
Excellent post.
Every prosecution is a gamble. There is always a possibility of an acquittal, or a dismissal, no matter how strong the evidence might appear.
A plea bargain is a sure thing. It makes absolutely certain of a conviction, even if its a lesser charge.
The prosecution of Trump could yet fail. This is a trial with an inexperienced judge who has made a number of legally dubious rulings that have been in the defendant’s favour. She might instruct the jury that Trump had the right to keep the documents. She might rule that the search was illegal, and dismiss virtually all the evidence as fruit of the poison tree. A witness might lie and get caught lying, and taint the whole case (cough cough Fuhrman cough). The case might be delayed time after time until after the election, when the principle that you can’t prosecute a sitting president comes into play. Or Trump might pardon himself. A hundred things could go wrong.
A plea bargain is always worth considering.
I’m against plea bargaining because it penalizes exercising the right to trial.
But everything Peter_Morris wrote is true, plus there is a substantial chance of GOP justices ruling in favor of Trump on an appeal.
I’m not opposed to a plea bargain of some sort provided Trump faces real consequences. And since there are so many threads about Trump’s various legal shenanigans, I had to make sure I’m not repeating myself too much in this thread. What I’m opposed to is the idea to any sort of plea bargain where Trump gets off with a slap-on-the-wrist with the idea that it’s preferrable to him getting off scot free. To start with, a slap-on-the-wrist is the same as winning so far as Trump is concerned. More importantly, plea deals in Trump’s favor shouldn’t be made on the grounds that we can’t trust Cannon to do her job properly. If Trump gets away scot free because of a crooked judge then that’s on the judge. But unless Trump capitulates, and shows both remorse and acknowledgement of wrong droing, then no plea bargain should be offered.
That remorse statement would not survive the walk from the courtroom to the first media microphone.
But I guess your real point is that Trump should not be offered a significantly lesser sentence for giving up the right to a trial and the right to appeal. I’d agree, and not just for Trump.
Then, I’m for lower charging and less punishment generally.
And that’s to the defendant’s benefit, to be denied that choice? If that’s the case, why does any defendant decide not to go to trial, which is perfectly within his power?
I don’t like this phrase slap on the wrist.
Suppose an elderly man has to go to a probation office a dozen times to discuss how he’s keeping away from bad companions and so forth. You could say it is a slap on the wrist, but I personally would feel that I was really being punished.
And suppose the punishment is to spend three or four weekends in jail with no internet? The public would say it was a slap on the wrist, but again I question that. It would be worse for Trump than me because I would, with reasonable lighting, read books. He’d hate it.
It’s absurd to wait to punish until years after the offense, and a short sentence may highlight the absurdity. But such slaps seem a real punishment to me. And Trump would agree.
And unless it was shown that Trump actually gave the secrets to an adversary nation, Espionage Act violations should not result in draconian punishment.
Between this and your problems with plea bargains, you have what I consider to be very odd ideas when it comes to the American judicial system and how it should work. We are so far apart on this that I don’t feel as though we have any common ground here. For there to be justice the punishment must fit the crime. Trump’s very serious crimes merits serious punishment not a slap on the wrist. It’s probably best to take discussions about plea bargains and judicial punishments in general to another thread.
Waitaminute, are you suggesting that, should Trump be found guilty of everything he’s charged with, his punishment should be a few weeks in jail without internet access because he’d consider that a big deal? That’s fucking absurd.
Do you not understand that driving force behind the absurd length of time is Trump himself? He’s the one creating the delays. He shouldn’t be rewarded for that. In fact, I think one could reasonably argue that he should receive a harsher punishment for wasting government time and what must be in the millions of dollars, on bullshit delays that serve no purpose whatsoever than to delay things.
So, if I rob a bank, should I just get a weekend in jail if I get caught before I spend the money?
I feel like your hangup is that people are charged with the espionage act without actually doing anything that you consider espionage. If the section of the act that Trump is being charged with was it’s own thing called ‘stealing government documents’ would that change anything for you?
And that will never happen; he never apologizes for anything. It’s a sign of weakness to him and he cannot abide being seen as weak. As for remorse, he’s never come within a country mile of it in his life.
Yeah, this has ‘tempest in a teapot’ written all over it.
I may not be, arguendo, crazy about possession of burglary tools being a crime, or possession of bomb-making materials potentially being charged as terrorism, but these are ways to categorize relatively lesser offenses that we – as a society – seek to disincentivize as part of an effort to reduce the incidence of much larger, much more serious crimes.
This, to me, is analogous to arguing that the actual elements of the AHCA were desirable, but “Obamacare” wasn’t: a deception by making a label into a snarl word.
[I wasn’t trying to make that a reply to @Joey_P . I bungled it ;-)]
I wrote that ten months ago and no longer think it.
Liberals often (at least before Trump was an issue) criticize the Espionage Act, but the criticism I threw out there is a bad one.