Adam Serwer: If It Were Anyone Else, They'd Be Prosecuted

[Nevilledog]

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Anne Applebaum
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"It is not simply that Trump’s behavior here was worse than Clinton’s; it’s that he rewrote the law to make the standard higher and then violated both the one described by Comey and the higher standard he set himself."
from @AdamSerwer:

theatlantic.com
If It Were Anyone Else, They’d Be Prosecuted
A revealing photo removed any remaining ambiguity.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/mar-lago-photo-trumps-impunity-classified-documents/671307/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/6ORg5

Among the documents disclosed in a Justice Department filing last night in the case involving former President Donald Trump’s possession of classified documents is a striking photograph, one showing documents marked secret and top secret strewn across the floor of Mar-a-Lago.

When the search of Trump’s home by the FBI was first announced, conservatives howled that the former president was a target of political persecution. That accusation was without basis, but it was also not impossible that the bureau might have abused its powers in its pursuit of a warrant to search Trump’s home. In truth, Trump’s defenders seemed less convinced by their accusations against the FBI than by their own conviction that Trump himself is above the law.

Retaining classified documents is not even close to the worst thing Trump has done. We are, after all, speaking of a man who twice tried to subvert the democratic process, first by using foreign aid in an attempt to blackmail Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into falsely implicating then–Democratic rival Joe Biden in a crime, and later by attempting to use a mob to seize power by force after bureaucratic means failed. But those were both overtly political acts, subject to distortions of perception and emphasis, and this one is rather more straightforward. It is illegal to “knowingly” remove “such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location.” The photograph of documents emblazoned secret removes any ambiguity as to whether Trump was in possession of classified documents. If it were anyone else, they would be prosecuted.

If that claim sounds familiar, it’s because Republicans once offered a similar refrain about Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic rival in the 2016 election. Trump led crowds in chants of “Lock her up!” demanding that Clinton be imprisoned for her mishandling of classified information in email communications. Republicans, at the time, considered the mishandling of such information very serious, as did the press, which devoted front-page coverage to the federal investigation into the matter in the months leading up to the election. Indeed, since the Trump revelations, right-wing media outlets like Fox News have compared Trump’s treatment unfavorably with Clinton’s, suggesting that she got off easy.

*snip*

[Irish_Dem]

1. Anyone else would be facing the death penalty.

At the very least, life without parole, SuperMax prison, 23 hours a day solitary.

[crickets]

2. More like this, please. Louder for those in the back. K&R