We have previously discussed the increasingly aggressive role of the White House Counsel’s Office (WHCO) in defending President Joe Biden, including spreading disinformation about various investigations. WHCO spokesman Ian Sams has taken the lead in attacking critics and denying facts related to corruption and other allegations. Now, the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) is blasting a memo in which the WHCO instructs reporters on how to cover the recent Hur report and allegations of the President’s diminished faculties.
Sams is not a lawyer. He is a political operative who has worked extensively for Democratic candidates and the Democratic National Committee, including a stint with Hillary Clinton. He was recently accused by the former head of the WHCA (and my former student) Jon Decker of giving false statements concerning the Special Counsel’s report.
There have been previous controversies over instructions given to the media by the White House. While the media has often been accused of maintaining a largely unified front protecting the President, actual memos directing their responses insulted many in the media. That is just not how this is done. You have to maintain certain proprieties and appearances.
Indeed, when the President recently snapped at a reporter by saying “that is not the judgment of the press,” it seemed to say the quiet part out loud in the ability of the White House to dictate coverage.
The most recent controversy came after Sams sent another letter with media instructions. Sams lays out how the report should be spinned in the media, putting in writing what is often conveyed in “background” chats with reporters.
It proved too much for WHCA president Kelly O’Donnell who called it “misdirected.” She added that “[a]s a non-profit organization that advocates for its members in their efforts to cover the presidency, the WHCA does not, cannot, and will not serve as a repository for the government’s views of what’s in the news.”
In my testimony at the Biden impeachment hearing, I raised the role of Sams and the White House staff in advocating for the President: ” To the extent that the President has used White House staff to maintain false claims or resist disclosures, it can fit into the type of Nixonian abuse of power model.”
The WHCO has long distinguished between the interests of a president and the presidency. Biden has his own personal counsel to oppose these allegations. That separation has now collapsed under White House Counsel Ed Siskel, who appears to approve of this advocacy role as Sams routinely lashes out at critics and investigators.
As noted in a recent column, Sams’s work is precariously close to the line drawn in past impeachments. Indeed, he may have already crossed over in the effort to swat back investigations into corruption allegations. Sams’s effort to spin out of these scandals could easily end up spinning the White House into an actual impeachment.
Turley Vindicated By Facts!
But Won’t Admit It!!
***
Professor Turley Writes:
“In my testimony at the Biden impeachment hearing–
……………………………………….
Here Turley provides a link to a September 28th column announcing ‘he will testify’ at the Committee on Oversight And Accountability which is chaired by Republican James Comer of Tennessee.
Yet today Turley declines to mention what he told that committee. Because it wasn’t what Republicans wanted to hear! Though Turley was, in fact, totally right!!
Here’s what Turley told that committee on September 28:
“I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment that is something that an inquiry has to establish,” he said. “But I also believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”
***
This week we learned that Comer’s committee was betting big on the testimony of Alexander Smirnov, an FBI informant whose reports were largely fabricated. This leaves the Biden impeachment inquiry in shambles. The crux of Comer’s investigation was leveraged on Smirnov’s testimony.
In other words, Turley was spot-on with his analysis that the case was lacking. But incredibly the Professor takes no credit for his foresight!
Did Turley ‘not’ want to be right on this? Or is it simply incorrect (in rightwing circles) to claim credit for having proper foresight??
This odd dichotomy illustrates the upside-down nature of Republican politics today where it’s wrong to be right.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4228663-gop-witness-says-current-evidence-doesnt-support-biden-impeachment/
“The crux of Comer’s investigation was leveraged on Smirnov’s testimony.” Says who?
‘
Prof. Turley,
I completely understand the WHCA frustration with the WHCO.
But I can not make sense of What you are trying to address.
I think it is stupid for those in government to try to dictate how the press covers stories about government.
Still I am trying to understand where the line is between government speech that is acceptable and that which is not.
The govenrment has no first amendment right to free speech, so Congress could constrain the executive speech in most any way it wishes.
But free speech is not critical because the constitution says so, but because it is a requirement for the improvement of humanity.
The primary line with respect to speech is the use of force or the threat of the use of force.
Whether government or individuals, you can speak as you please including telling others how they should speak.
What you can not do is compel speech, bar speech or censor speech.
So the WHCO can spin its message and provide direction to journalists.
What it can not do is require them to write a specific way or bar them from writing about something.
I THINK you are claiming that the rules are somewhat different for the White House Counsels office.
Why ?
I am not saying that the efforts of WHCO to get journalists to spin the story are not disturbing.
All that means is that the press should be reporting on the executives efforts to spin the story.
Do you actually understand how the WH press conference operation works? The President (in the case of a competent example) and/or Press Secretary decide who gets admitted to the room in the first place, and then control who gets questions answered. That favoritism has a huge impact on the careers of those so-called journalists, probably more so than anything their editors control. Manipulating what is reported by veiled threats such as Turley identifies here entails chilling speech every bit as much as manipulating social media to ignore and deprioritize disfavored points of view.
So … what is new? The WHCA simply sees the biden/harris manipulation of so-called journalists is out in the open, for all to see. The “mainstream” media, print and broadcast, have been and are sycophants for biden/harris and the elected Ds. When all these Ds used a soft touch and off-the-record chats to spin the news about the biden administration, it was ok because those attempts were not transparent. (Don’t you love that word transparent.)
I will be interested to see how deeply JT’s book gets into the origins of what has become this massive government, NGO and private industry censorship infrastructure. JT does a great service in his blog of identifying censorship operations as they happen. But what we get here doesn’t come close to identifying the breadth of coordination that is controlling the information available to the public. This interview from Tucker Carlson with the Executive Director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, Mike Benz, lays out in excruciating detail the beast we are facing today. If what he is saying is true, and there is no reason at this point to doubt it, democracy is already dead. It’s roughly 1 hour and I will never read another Turley post about the law, politics or censorship the same way again.
https://rumble.com/v4dtxtu-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-governments-mass-censorship-campaign.html?mref=6zof&mc=dgip3&ep=1
https://foundationforfreedomonline.com/
Don’t kid yourself. Jonathan Turley is political operative and has been for as long as I can remember. He has said nothing about DJT’s indictments, guilty verdicts, the huge dollar amounts he will have to pay and has the audicity to use a sketch of the White House on his 2/17/24 column. Nor did he ever report on the misdeeds of DJT when he was in office or now. If what he says in the 2/17/24 column is true, then he needs to back it up. If Kelly O’Donnell, who I admire by the way, feels that Sams is over the line on
something then she should report it to the proper White House officials, so he can be fired. Some with all the insinuation!
ATS, Turley is a liberal that is slowly being red pilled by the truly fascist left in this country.
Contra your claim Turley frequently covers Trump, and often in a negative fashion.
What he does NOT do is repeat left wing nut talking points.
He has also been fairly good at predicting things.
While I am not sure of Turley’s point in this article – So the Biden executive is engaged in the spread of misinformation and sping and it is trying to persuade reporters to shill a false narrative.
And it appears that some journalists are pushing back.
Good for them, that is their job.
Government lies to people all the time. Just as we can not censor what we beleive to be the lies of private actors, we do not have the means to constraint government from spewing poppycock.
While Government does not have an actual right to free speech, the problems with censoring the speech of people are not different in censoring the speech of government.
The answer to bad speech is always more speech.
The answer to the efforts of the WHCO to sell false naratives is to report the facts and call out the WHCO.
President Trump was not a “criminal” until he ran for president.
How can that be?
How many entrepreneurs or other citizens have overestimated or exaggerated the value of their assets?
I once had a neighbor from the Philippines who made a false statement to his lender and its regulatory oversight agency that he was in a financial bind and needed to refinance while a brand new 40-foot RV and a 25-foot skiboat sat in his yard with a Super-Duty 4×4, sedans, a sports car, and assets strewn all about the place rather than being subjected to liquidation. I called Maxine Waters’ office to inquire, and reps there became irate that I would question governmental assistance to a minority.
Will these “welfare” frauds be prosecuted?
The Biden Crime Family is totally corrupt and criminal, and its members will never be accused, much less charged, by the Deep Deep State “Swamp” Regime.
Real President Donald J. Trump was nothing like the true fraud “colossus,” Bernie Madoff.
Malicious political prosecution is the crime here.
Interestingly, the essential issue is that Barack Hussein “Barry ‘I-Have-A-Statue-In-Jakarta’ Soetoro Obama is fundamentally transforming the United States of America into MexAfriAsiRabia—he recently imported 10 million reinforcements for his welfare state army—and Americans are allowing it to happen.
Ultimately, the Jay/Washington letter of 1787, which precluded foreigners with foreign allegiances from becoming president or vice president, was the basis for the constitutional requirement that a president be a “natural born citizen,” something Obama will never be, according to the legal text and reference of the era, the Law of Nations, Vattel, 1758.
That America’s nemesis, its direct and mortal enemy, Obama, ever held office is the overriding abberation, nay, crime herein.
ButAnon: You write: “He [JT] has said nothing about DJT’s indictments, guilty verdicts, the huge dollar amounts he will have to pay and has the audicity to use a sketch of the White House on his 2/17/24 column.”
Funny you should make this statement. Turley addressed the shenanigans in Arthur Engoron’s Kangeroo court this morning in The Hill. Here is a tidbit:
“Having campaigned on bagging Trump on any basis, James turned the law into a virtual license to hunt him down along with his family and his associates.
Engoron proved the perfect judge for the case. The opinion itself seems almost cathartic for the jurist who struggled with Trump inside and outside of court. In the judgment, Engoron fulfilled Oscar Wilde’s rule that the only way to be rid of temptation is to yield to it. He ordered everything short of throwing Trump into a wood chipper.
The size of the damages is grotesque and should shock the conscience of any judge on appeal. Even if the Democrat-appointed judges on the New York Court of Appeals were to ignore the obvious inequity and unfairness, the United States Supreme Court could intervene.
State courts tend to get a significant amount of deference in the interpretation of their own laws. After all, if New York wants to turn Wall Street into a remake of “The Hunger Games,” it has only itself to blame as other businesses flee the state.
The impact on New York business is likely to be dire. New York is already viewed as a hostile business environment, with the top end of its tax base literally heading south as taxes and crime rises. This draconian award is only going to deepen concerns over the arbitrary application of the law by figures like James, who previously sought to disband the National Rifle Association. (She has shown less interest in cracking down on liberal organizations like Black Lives Matter or the National Action Network of Al Sharpton despite their own major financial scandals.)
As James gleefully uses this law to break up a major New York corporation, it is hard to imagine many businesses rushing to the Big Apple. This follows Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) campaigning against Amazon seeking to open new facilities in the city. After this week, drawing new businesses to the city is going to be about as easy as selling country estates during the French Revolution.
The one hope for New York businesses may be the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite the deference afforded to the states and their courts, the court has occasionally intervened to block excessive damage awards.
. . .
The court may find almost half a billion dollars in damages without a single lost dollar from a victim to be a tad excessive.
That prospect will not dampen the thrill-kill environment in New York this week. In electing openly partisan prosecutors such as James and District Attorney Alvin Bragg, voters have shown a preference for political prosecutions and investigations.
. . . .
But you do not have to feel sorry or even sympathetic for Trump to see this award as obscene. The appeal will test the New York legal system to see if other judges can do what Judge Engoron found so difficult: set aside their feelings about Trump.
New York is one of our oldest and most distinguished bars. It has long resisted those who sought to use the law to pursue political opponents and unpopular figures. It will now be tested to see if those values transcend even Trump.”
Hope you enjoyed the comment
“The court may find almost half a billion dollars in damages without a single lost dollar from a victim to be a tad excessive.”
In such cases, the fine is typically some multiple of the damages suffered by a particular individual or company. Last I checked, 0 x any multiple is 0.
On the other hand, if your goal is to confiscate a producer’s wealth and property, and to destroy him, then those numbers are whatever you wish them to be.
KUDOS to Jonathan Turley for shining the light about the WH communications machine. Sure would like to see a flow chart including all the active participants (WH, DNC, social influencers, intelligence agencies, government agencies and MSM) using exact same wording of the same mindset.
Do you think Biden’s foreign policy on Ukraine has helped America or hurt Russia? Just the opposite for both questions (see article linked below). And they call their critics tools for Putin, ha!
https://americanmind.org/salvo/saving-americas-future-from-the-blob/
For a contrasting view: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/12/fiona-hill-ukraine-putin-00131285
If we were sane we would be discussing Ukraine rather than trapped in a binary.
I and many others have noted Putin invades somebody during every presidency except Trumps.
Why ? Is that random, or is that because of some difference regarding Trump or Trump polices.
In the area of Ukraine and many other things we have reasonably good data from Bush. Obama, Trump and Biden to assess how different policies worked.
Yet we do not really discuss that we lobb political grenades back and forth without trying to actually consider what worked and why.
We have similar situations with respect to the border, to government spending to taxes, to levels of crime, ot our policies regarding crime.
Jonathan: All WH spokespeople try to shape the narrative about policy and other issues–and to push back on claims they consider not accurate. DJT’s WH did it when faced with criticism in the media. DJT even sued the Washington Post and the NY Times for defamation over their criticism of his statements and policies. He lost all those cases. Biden hasn’t sued anybody because they have criticized his policies or statements. But you seem to think WHCO should not be pushing back against SC Hur’s spurious claims in his report about Pres. Biden’s mental acuity and age–his inability to remember events going back as far as 15 years. Seems to me it is the role of the WHCO to push back on misinformation and disinformation whenever it occurs.
Contrary to your claim, the Biden WHCO can’t “dictate coverage”. It’s even more bizarre you would claim “Sam’s effort to spin out of these scandals could easily end up spinning the White House into an actual impeachment”. First, what “scandals”? Do you mean your frequent claim about the Biden family “corruption scandal” that Jim Comer is looking into with his impeachment inquiry? The “scandal” that Comer has yet to prove? Isn’t your use of the term “scandal” your own form of spin? Second, if the WHCO criticizes Hur’s focus on the President’s age and lack of memory as an unnecessary distraction from the fact that there was no legal basis to charge Biden how can that possibly be a basis for impeachment?
Seems to me your are clutching at straws in your attacks on the WHCO. You’ve lost the narrative on the impeachment inquiry because that is going nowhere with the just announcement criminal charges against Comer’s “star witness”. So what’s left? Attack the messenger because you don’t like what he says about the Hur report. That’s a sure sign you on a fool’s errand!
It takes a special kind of person to get caught overseeing a fraudulent charity, a fraudulent “university,” and a business that repeatedly committed fraud. That special person is Donald Trump.
I am not sure that I get Turley’s argument regarding WHCO. I do not think Turley was that clear.
I THINK Turley is saying that WHCO is a non-political portion of the executive, that it is the presidents – as opposed to Joe Biden’s lawyers.
It is NOT the same as the WH Press secretary or even DOD’s press department.
I beleive Turley is correct that WHCO should not engage in propoganda.
But SHOULD NOT is not the same as CAN NOT.
Turley seems to beleive there is some conduct at WHCO that parallells watergate.
The REAL story of watergate with respect to the presidency is quite small. Nixon after the fact directed BB Ribozzo to raise money to pay to keep the burglars quiet. That is pretty much it.
There is lots and lots of corrupt and damnable conduct By Biden and the children running the country, But for the most part – just like the conduct that the left is stupidly weaponizing with trump – it is NOT a crime. To the extent it is an issue for the courts at all, it is merely for them to say NO the president can not do that or Yes, he can or must.
Your lawfare against Trump is only making the left look bad – not just with Trump supporters but with independents and even some democrats.
The Willis case has become a circus. I will be shocked if she is not removed. Regardless she will spend the next 2 years tied up in hearings and possibly facing criminal charges. Though I doubt she is going to jail.
Regardless, she is DOING things that are much worse than those she is accusing others of.
The more I learn the worse the engron case is. NY apeals courts already severely limited the scope of his trial and he has ignored those limits.
Several of the people that he “fined” millions of dollars have absolutely no involvement with any of the allegations or even the businesses.
It appears that large portions of Engron’s order are to assure that no one else in the Trump family can take over the businesses that Engron is trying to steal. The appelate courts have already bitch slapped the judge that Engron put in charge of things, and she has already cost the organization 2.5M. It is likely that most of this will go away quite fast as the appeals court will likely vacate significant parts of Engrons orders as outside the authority that the appeals courts already established.
Sams will be “promoted” soo due to his inability to sell this garbage bag full of p**p.
Biden commits felonies that would and should bring charges of bribery and selling out America to our adversaries with documents he stole, and he’s too old.
It’s not his “age” that is the problem; I turned 80 two months ago and, mentally, I can outperform SloJoe. His debilitating health issue is his mental health – in decline or worsening dementia or whatever MDs would identify. It does not, however, take an MD to see and hear a man who should not be seeking reelection; his mental/brain health was noticeably poor in 2019-20, but enough voters FOOLishly ignored it as he stayed in his cellar in Delaware. Enough is enough for the USA and the world to suffer any more manipulation by biden and his handlers.
WHCA was embarrassed that a memo was needed to tell them what they already knew they need to do.
The Fox is now officially in charge of the Hen House
(Now Paging: Peter Thiel – In-Q-tel – Palantir)
𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐒𝐢𝐠𝐧 𝐀𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐈-𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐄𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫𝐲
Major technology companies signed a pact Friday to voluntarily adopt “reasonable precautions” to prevent artificial intelligence tools from disrupting democratic elections worldwide
By: AP ~ Feb. 16, 2024
https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2024-02-16/tech-companies-sign-accord-to-combat-ai-generated-election-trickery
“Democrat” meaning communist.
“[We gave you] a republic, if you can keep it.”
There is actually nothing in the Constitution for democrats (i.e. communists) to vote for; welfare and affirmative action – “free stuff” and “free status” are unconstitutional.
Oops!
Article 1, Section 8, provides Congress the power to tax for ONLY debt, defense, and “…general (all, the whole) Welfare…,” omitting and, thereby, excluding any power to tax for individual Welfare, specific Welfare, particular Welfare, favor or charity. The same article enumerates and provides Congress the power to regulate ONLY the Value of money, Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian Tribes, and land and naval Forces. Additionally, the 5th Amendment right to private property was initially qualified by the Framers and is, therefore, absolute, allowing no further qualification, and allowing ONLY the owner the power to “claim and exercise” dominion over private property.
It seems the role of the President today is to promote dictatorship a la of the Beria – Stalin type.
====
Three separate prosecutors reportedly met with White House aides before indicting former President Donald Trump
>>> In Georgia: Radical Atlanta DA Fani Willis met with White House counsel twice – she indicted Trump NINE MONTHS LATER.
>>> In Florida: Special Counsel in DC Jack Smith met with a member of the Joe Biden’s counsel – he indicted Trump THREE MONTHS LATER.
>>> In New York: Far-Left Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg met with federal law enforcement – he indicted Trump TWO WEEKS LATER.
This is truly a jaw-dropping revelation. We’re rushing to you right now to get your gut reaction.
Kiddies, see the danger of letting ‘government officials’ i.e. bureaucrats determine what is and is not truth/misinformation? And after making that determination they pass it on to a witless press?
OT: In many ways, Qatar is Iran with a smile and they are far more ahead on their end goal than the Ayatollahs who get most of the attention as the region’s nefarious players.
Qatar has been involved with the funding of Hamas for years. Besides bank accounts – their primary avenue of funneling money into Sinwar’s military development in the Gaza Strip as been UNRWA, which is why Qatar is so ticked about Netanyahu pushing for its closure. Taking out UNRWA will not only move the manufactured conflict that exists between Israel and the so called “palestinians” to a close, but it will leave Qatar out of tools for injecting the Arabs in the Levant with radical Muslim Brotherhood ideology.
https://www.israelunwired.com/why-is-israel-still-playing-footsies-with-qatar/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Why+Is+Israel+Still+Playing+Footsies+With+Qatar%3F&utm_campaign=IDF+Strikes+Back+In+Arab+Occupied+Tulkarm
I often wonder whether the WHCO is protecting Biden from ostensible frailty or [selective] amnesia in his statements, -or protecting him from blurting out another blatant lie/ self-created story….
On tv broadcast, I witnessed SlowJoe talking by phone with the parents of one of the three member of the military murdered recently. As has been the case before, SlowJoe said he knew how these poor souls felt … because his son Beau served in the military in someplace in the Middle East that he identified and “that is how I lost him.” Really! I heard him! Not cancer!! Not disease! Unless his handlers give him a script or cheat-sheets, he lies or, due to his demented state, he “misremembers.”
It looks as if some members of the media briefly forgot that their role is to be lying lickspittle lackeys.
OT: “According to Gallant, 1,468 of UNRWA’s 13,000 staff members in Gaza are members of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.”
” 30 employees of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) took part in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.”
https://www.jns.org/gallant-30-unrwa-employees-participated-in-oct-7-massacre/?_se=ODJsaW9uc3Bob3RvZ3JhcGh5QGdtYWlsLmNvbQ%3D%3D&utm_campaign=Evening+Syndicate+Friday+2162024&utm_medium=email&utm_source=brevo
So here is a prosecutorial discretion question. It is 1955, in Mississippi. Emmett Till, a black youth from Chicago, has been beaten and shot to death by three white men for disrespecting a white lady, one of the men’s wife. Till is known to be a smart aleck by many of his friends, and one likely to do just such a thing. Any jury is likely to be composed of seven blacks and five white men, because about 2/3 of the town is black. (Actually, it was an all-white jury, but I am changing it up for the theoretical.)
You are the prosecutor. You know the three men are guilty, but you also know that there is no way you are going to get five white people on that jury to vote to convict their white neighbors for killing a smart-aleck colored boy from Illinois. Plus, there are even credible allegations that one or more black men helped the white men kill Till. Even one white person would be enough to hang the jury. So, as the prosecutor, do you bring it to trial, knowing full well that you are not going to get a conviction.
The standard is, that you may take this to trial if an UNBIASED trier of fact would not convict. But there are questions. Some people believe that civil rights groups did the crime. The murder weapon was never found. Black men were probably involved in the murder, too. You also know that a trial is going to be bad for the town. What do you do? Try them, or write a 400 page report?
Did you mean “The standard is, that you may NOT take this to trial if an unbiased trier of fact would not convict”? Because what you actually wrote is false
Hur concluded that an unbiased trier of fact would not convict: “we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” Nor is that the only relevant quote. Over and over in the document, Hur said that there was insufficient evidence to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
BTW, the prosecutor in Emmett Till’s murder *did* take it to trial, and the all-white jury acquitted the murderers. And Hur was required to write a report regardless of his decision to charge or decline to charge.
Possessing classified documents is a crime. The proof is possession.
Unlike you, Hur quotes the actual laws and goes through the elements that need to be satisfied.
But it’s interesting to know that you think Trump committed a crime by possessing classified documents.
Its interesting that you think Trump is innocent like Biden is innocent
I don’t think Trump is innocent of crimes. Trump obstructed (refused to return documents, moved documents after they were subpoenaed, attempted to have the security tapes erased), as is laid out in the indictment. I don’t know whether or not Biden is innocent, but I do know that he cooperated and that Hur concluded there was insufficient evidence to prove any crimes beyond a reasonable doubt.
“we find the evidence as a whole insufficient to meet the government’s burden of proving that Mr. Biden willfully retained the Afghanistan documents in the Virginia home in 2017″
‘Willfully retained”
The off ramp Garland told Hur to take is the difference between manslaughter 1st degree murder. So the person is dead, but cant prove 1st degree murder, so we will refuse to indict period.
Willful retention requires extra elements. (knowingly possessing the classified documents from 2017 through 2023 ‘seems’ willful)
Possession is a crime and only requires possession.
How about you tell us what specific law you think Hur omitted in his discussion — you know, the one that “only requires possession.” Because none of the laws he quoted and discussed (e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 793(e), 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(1) and 18 U.S.C. § 1519) “only requires possession.”
(a)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.
As Hur noted, “First, the statute requires removal “without authority,” and when Mr. Biden was vice president he was authorized to take and keep classified materials at his private residences. Because any act of removal must have occurred when Mr. Biden was vice president, it was arguably done with authority. …”
Care to try again?
Here’s the single most important piece of evidence in Hur’s report: In a recording made by the ghostwriter in February 2017 — a month after Biden left the vice-presidency — Biden says he had ‘just found all the classified stuff downstairs.’… He kept those sensitive documents and said nothing for five more years. Not until 2022 — after the FBI executed its search warrant on Trump at Mar-a-Lago — did Biden’s people alert the authorities….”
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/real-biden-documents-scandal-is-not-old-man-stuff.html
Retaining documents for 5 years is willful.
The corrupt left wants to claim Biden is not sentient to be responsible for his won action from 2017 to 2022, but good enough to be President of the United States
“Hur said Biden read to Zwontizer from classified entries “nearly verbatim” on at least three occasions, sometimes for an hour or more, but said evidence didn’t show that Biden knew the passages were classified or that he intended to share classified information.”
https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/feb/09/fact-checking-joe-biden-about-sharing-classified-m/
So again, Joe was mentally incompetent in 2017, or maybe his years in the Senate, and 8 years a Vice President he just too stupid to understand what CLASSIFIED stamped on the documents meant.
Again: you’re ignoring that the law you’re relying on *requires* that the person “removes such documents or materials without authority,” and Hur noted that he removed them when he did have authority.
And it looks like you’ve never read the actual report. Here’s what Biden said to Zwonitzer and what Hur concluded it was a reference to: “‘early on, in ’09 — I just found all the classified stuff downstairs — I wrote the President a handwritten 40-page memorandum arguing against deploying additional troops to Iraq-, I mean, to Afghanistan, on the grounds that it wouldn’t matter, that the day we left would be like the day before we arrived. And I made the same argument … I wrote that piece 11 or 12 years ago.’
“As discussed in the next chapter, Mr. Biden was referring to a long, handwritten memo he faxed to President Obama from Nantucket over the Thanksgiving weekend in 2009. In the memo — which Bob Woodward later detailed in his book, Obama’s Wars — Mr. Biden argued against engaging in full-scale counterinsurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan.” (ellipsis in the original).
About other Afghanistan docs, Hur says things like “we cannot rule out other explanations, including the possibility that the classified Afghanistan documents were left somewhere in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home while he was vice president and forgotten there, until someone put them in the garage box after the 2019 move from the Virginia home to the Delaware home without realizing the documents contained classified information.”
As for the “nearly verbatim” reading, it was from his diaries, and as the report notes, “We do not, however, believe this evidence would meet the government’s burden at trial — particularly the requirement to prove that Mr. Biden intended to do something the law forbids. Consistent with statements Mr. Biden made during our interview of him and arguments made by the White House Counsel and Mr. Biden’s personal counsel, we expect Mr. Biden’s defense at trial would be that he thought his notebooks [i.e., diaries] were his personal property and he was allowed to take them home, even if they contained classified information.” You do know that the PRA has an exception for diaries, right?
“We do not, however, believe this evidence would meet the government’s burden at trial — particularly the requirement to prove that Mr. Biden intended to do something the law forbids.
This is exactly the position taken by Trump. His actions never violated any laws. All of his actions are proper as President leaving office.
And Hur has conflated Joes diaries with the classified Afghanistan documents . This all came to light when the ghost writer destroyed evidence and the FBI was able to retrieve it.
We are supposed to believe the Joe was reading verbatim, for hours from Joes hand written notebook? That would be evidence that Hur should have viewed to verify. I’m sure he did not.
Obstruction violates laws. He refused to give them back when subpoenaed, moved them in an attempt to hide them, attempted to erase security tapes.
And I don’t care what you are or are not sure of.
As Hur noted, “First, the statute requires removal “without authority,” and when Mr. Biden was vice president,
For sure we will forget the Senate documents.
And ignore the 7 years he willfully retained Classified material
About the Senate-era docs, Hur said “we do not know whether Mr. Biden willfully retained the classified documents.” Not sure why you think you know better than Hur.
About the Senate-era docs, Hur said “we do not know whether Mr. Biden willfully retained the classified documents.”
From 2007 until 2022. 15 years and maybe longer. That is willful retention. AND he had no authority to remove.
as a Senator he could not take these documents “home with him”
Hur, like the DOJ with Hunter is just ignoring the law and giving the right team a pass.
Add this to long list of evidence proving the DoJ is irredeemably politicized.
We all knew that Hur was NEVER writing a report with a recommendation to indict Biden. dness
All this is nothing willful blindness The hundreds of pages of excuses, mind reading, and fanciful interpretation of statutes, set a precedent Jack Smith will have deal in the outside chance it ever sees the inside of a courtroom
For all you know, he legally brought them home while VP, not when he was in the Senate.
and when Mr. Biden was vice president he was authorized to take and keep classified materials at his private residences.,
So why the raid at MAL?
There was no raid initially, because Trump willingly returned some of the documents. But then the FBI learned that Trump obstructed the return of other documents. Biden did not obstruct; he cooperated. Had Trump simply cooperated, he wouldn’t have been indicted.
no, he concluded that the jury would feel so sorry for this demented man that they wouldn’t convict him
“For the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution. For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden. … we find this evidence to be insufficient to meet the government’s burden in a criminal prosecution. … we find the evidence as a whole insufficient to meet the government’s burden of proving that Mr. Biden willfully retained the Afghanistan documents in the Virginia home in 2017. … There is also insufficient evidence that Mr. Biden willfully retained the handwritten Thanksgiving memo … We conclude that the evidence is insufficient to meet the government’s burden. In accordance with the Justice Manual, because we do not believe the government is likely to obtain a conviction at trial, we decline prosecution. … There is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Biden intentionally retained the classified documents in the EYES ONLY envelope after his term as vice president or caused his staff to do so. Instead, the evidence supports an innocent explanation for the unauthorized retention of those documents. … There is insufficient evidence to support charging Mr. Biden for the retention of the other marked classified documents recovered from the Penn Biden Center…”
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf
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Among the things he concluded:
“For the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Prosecution of Mr. Biden is also unwarranted based on our consideration of the aggravating and mitigating factors set forth in the Department of Justice’s Principles of Federal Prosecution. For these reasons, we decline prosecution of Mr. Biden. … we find this evidence to be insufficient to meet the government’s burden in a criminal prosecution. … we find the evidence as a whole insufficient to meet the government’s burden of proving that Mr. Biden willfully retained the Afghanistan documents in the Virginia home in 2017. … There is also insufficient evidence that Mr. Biden willfully retained the handwritten Thanksgiving memo … We conclude that the evidence is insufficient to meet the government’s burden. In accordance with the Justice Manual, because we do not believe the government is likely to obtain a conviction at trial, we decline prosecution. … There is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Biden intentionally retained the classified documents in the EYES ONLY envelope after his term as vice president or caused his staff to do so. Instead, the evidence supports an innocent explanation for the unauthorized retention of those documents. … There is insufficient evidence to support charging Mr. Biden for the retention of the other marked classified documents recovered from the Penn Biden Center…”
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf
Did you mean “The standard is, that you may NOT take this to trial if an unbiased trier of fact would not convict”? Because what you actually wrote is false
Yes, thank you for correcting that! I was trying to rush off for a Zoom meeting.
@anon
Did you mean “The standard is, that you may NOT take this to trial if an unbiased trier of fact would not convict”? Because what you actually wrote is false
Yes, thank you for correcting that! I was trying to rush off for a Zoom meeting.
Ian Sams is nothing more than Lunch Box Joe’s wannabe Praetorian Guard-in-training. If Sams can successfully control the narrative until the November election, he will be the next recipient of the Congressional Medal of Freedom. Sound about right Jonathan ?
I agree with Sam’s comments this a.m., i.e., —that the intended thrust of JT’s posting is not about Hur’s characterization of his findings, but rather the coaching that press reporters receive from the WHCO (Sams).
Indeed, the control and STRUCTURED prepping of Biden, including whom to call upon, e.g., “[Biden’s] pocket card showed a photo of a journalist with the Los Angeles Times (LAT) along with the pronunciation of her last name under “Question #1.” https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-defends-bidens-cheat-sheet-reporters-questions-1797164
This is in stark contrast to (what I refer to as) what-you-see-is-what-you-get Trump, who was unhappy with how press reporters bombarded Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and took over himself, holding DIRECT, NON-prepped engagements with the media, both at the WH and wherever.
Take and think what you may of Trump (and I, like many, wince at his personality) but no one can deny that Trump is ‘what-you-see-is-what-you-get,” –not (well, you know….)
Lin,
Well said.
Keeping Biden hidden in the basement. Has spent 40% of his time on vacation. He only gets pre-vetted softball questions from friendly reporters. The note cards, pictures of reporters with their names spelled out who to call on.
That is quite the difference between the Biden and Trump. Clearly Trump can just get up there and take on the press without pre-vetted soft ball questions.