Two tiered justice system
The same way Trump was investigated for the last six years by the Democrat congress and house committees.
Wow, thought we were having a discussion. Nice ad hominem, personal attack. It appears every time you start getting annoyed at the way the discussion is going, you drag out that same old trope questioning my integrity.
If we can't do this without the personal attacks, I won't do it at all. You win. Have a nice day.
That's not an attack. It's a challenge. You spent years dismissing everything the Democrat controlled House of Representatives did. You made it
exceptionally clear for the entire time how little you thought of those proceedings: how meritless, contrived, partisan, and fraudulent the house committee investigation and the impeachment proceedings were. Alluding to your own frequently stated beliefs is not a personal attack. I merely expressed a slightly sarcastic expectation that you'll hold yourself to the same standards now that the House is flipped. Obviously I don't
actually expect you to because you've already shown that you won't. That is not an ad hominem. An ad hominem would be an attack on you personally to try to detract from an otherwise sound position; this is the opposite. If you want to leave the discussion on that basis, fine by me.
18 s 1924 doesn't say anything about fraudulent intent.
"Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both."
It can't plausibly be argued that anyone at that level has not been briefed more than once on what is expected.
To the best of my knowledge, 1924 is not one of the offences that has been named in court records so far. 1924 explicitly deals with
classified information. While I would not be surprised to see it eventually land on an indictment, you'll recall that the Mar A Lago search warrant pertained to
documents with classification markings (a distinction we've discussed earlier in this thread), and named the three Title 18 offences found in sections 793 (wilfully retaining defense information), 1519 (obstruction), and 2071 (concealment or removal of government documents). I discussed the elements of thsoe offences here:
A Deeply Fractured US 1924 was very notably absent. So you're starting form a point of assumption that branches off from what we were discussing. Do you have something to suggest that 1924 is in play? Because that would certainly be an interesting and significant development.
Presupposing that you didn't just make a mistake, and that 1924 is one of the offences now being seriously examined, The very section you cite, is still riddled with requirements of intent; anyone at all versed in criminal law would plainly see that. "knowingly removes", "without authority", "with the intent to retain", "unauthorized location"- each one of those is an element of the offense, and you have to make each of thsoe stick to someone specifically. Plus, of course, the element of the documents actually containing classified information, which is not at this point known to us.
The
what happened is seldom the difficult part in a complex investigation
; it's
who knew
, who acted
, who decided
, who intended
. If you imagine the mechanics of packing up an office, moving its contents elsewhere, unpacking and storing those contents, then later returning and searching them, and then signing a false declaration that they aren't there- each one of thsoe could be (and likely was) a different person. It requires thorough investigation to determine if any one person, or a conspiracy of persons knew, intended, and either acted or directed that someone act in a way that would be prosecutable. The imminent testimony of Evan Corcoran is likely important in determining this.
In any case, an interesting hypothetical should it come to pass that 1924 is on the table. If prosecutors prove that the documents from Mar A Lago did in fact remain classified, then maybe we'll see this offense, with the stricter liability its wording entails, thrown into the mix. I wouldn't expect to hear about that before the indictment stage, unless there were to be another search warrant with an affidavit naming it- and I feel like if that was going to happen, it would have.
