Has Biden done this after he was no longer in office? There is a massive difference between a current President having classified information, which is part of his job, and a former President holding classified information, which he has no business doing.
If there was evidence that Barack Obama or Bill Clinton had kept classified documents after leaving office and refused to return them to the government when asked to do so, I’d be saying bring them up on criminal charges. But they didn’t do this, despite any hysterical lies the right wing is telling.
Trump did it. He was properly charged. And he should be convicted and receive the appropriate punishment, which is a prison sentence. Because he is a criminal and criminals should be punished.
As for the precedent, I feel showing that a powerful enough person is above the law does more damage to the country and is more likely to cause future uprisings than punishing that person would. Most of the MAGA crowd are cowards and they’ll back down if we show them a strong front. If we show them mercy, they think it’s a sign of weakness and grow more dangerous.
Of course he had them after he was out of office. They date back to his days as a Senator, and he was out of office for four years during the Trump years. Joe Biden was casually removing classified documents and taking them home for years, maybe decades. He only ‘cooperated’ when they were discovered. He is still under investigation by a special prosecutor for this, btw.
As far as I can tell, Bill Clinton did not take home classified documents. But his Chief of Staff Sandy Berger was caught with documents from a secure facility tucked into his pants. He was charged and convicted, but got a slap,on the wrist for what seems to me to be the worst document violation of all, as it shows clear intent to surreptisiously remove classified documents.
This is not to minimize what Trump did. He is unique in that he continued to play games with the documents and obstruct justice. He deserves to be convicted of a felony and should never be president again. But years in jail given the precedents would be crazy.
As a first-time poster, you are on thin ice already by disregarding the mod notes and warnings in this thread. Stop discussing Biden’s classified documents violations in this thread now. Another post like this will convince me (as I already suspect) that you are only here to troll and will result in a suspension.
I apologize. I was reading through the thread and I responded to a post as I read it. I did not read on to see that there was a moderating post on the subject.
I appreciate the apology, but posters need to review all threads they are posting in to make sure they’re not in violation of a mod note. This is the responsibility of each poster.
If you find yourself in a Trump thread talking about Biden, it might be a good idea to check. Then if there is a mod note, follow this procedure, because you’re probably hijacking the thread:
I understand that it’s best to read the entire thread before responding to a post in the thread. But let’s be realistic; people are often going to post responses as they read the post they’re responding to.
Is it possible to create some sore of note that is attached directly to posts that generate moderator instructions or warnings? That way a reader would see that the moderator note exists simultaneously with reading the post that caused it.
Not that I’m aware of. If your post is quoted, then you’ll receive a bubble that indicates you were quoted and that might let you know you’ve received a mod note. That’s all we’ve got.
If you’re responding after the mod note, though, there’s no way we can know you might not see it and post in violation of it. So please, do a quick review of posts before hitting the ‘Reply’ button.
Now that I’ve gotten some sleep, I see that I misread your question and gave you a somewhat wrong answer.
We can add staff notices to moderated posts and some of us do try to do that. I didn’t in this instance, and I don’t want to create an obligation on all moderators that we must do this. It’s extra work and we already ask a lot of our mods. Each staff notice must be appended to each post that is a hijack, and in some forums, the hijacks can go on for many posts and add up fast. If raised in the mod loop to discuss this as a formal rule change, I will argue against it.
At present and absent a rule change, it is still incumbent on posters to review threads to make sure they are staying within the boundaries of a thread topic and more importantly, that they haven’t missed a mod note. Nonetheless, some of us will try to add staff notices and we hope it will help.
That’s not how the Supreme Court works. They’re not an all-powerful body that can hand out edicts at will, even though sometimes it feels like they are. Here are a couple of sites that give sort of a general overview of how things work:
As you might gather, there are a lot of steps involving a significant amount of time before something gets in front of them, if it ever does.
Now, someone might request a stay, and temporarily halt the enforcement of sentencing, but I’m not sure if that would apply in this case.
Also, if the SCOTUS overturned a conviction “just because”, it would likely be the most controversial action they’ve ever taken, and I have trouble seeing them stick their necks out that far. Especially given how many times they’ve ruled against Trump in the past.
This may be perceived differently when we know the grounds for any appeal.
However, compared to the Dred Scott decision, or Bush v. Gore, a ruling to send Trump to prison, or not to, strikes me as fun-to-discuss trivia. If he was completely prevented from campaigning – say, not allowed to go on the internet to participate in a debate – I would change my mind about it being unimportant, but it still would be less consequential than when the Supreme Court stopped the presidential recount.
Agreed. If someone petitioned the Supreme Court to overturn Trump’s conviction because “he’s the second coming of Jesus and therefore above the laws of man”, I’m sure the court would rule against it 7-2.