Now it's Mike Pence's turn in the barrel:
A lawyer for former vice president Mike Pence, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, found what they called “a small number” of documents bearing classified markings during a search of Pence’s Indiana home, according to letters to the National Archives.
Search Obama's house! Do it now! I'll bet he's got, like, a million classified documents or something.
In all seriousness, there seems to be widespread sloppiness at the highest levels. Taking documents home? Sure. But isn't there a post-office office cleanup?
And of course the difference with Trump is the lies and stonewalling. But still, it is a sad state that Trump is worse than Democrats only as a matter of degree.
Voluntary reporting and returning vs. obstruction is not a matter of degree.
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"And of course the difference with Trump is the lies and stonewalling. But still, it is a sad state that Trump is worse than Democrats only as a matter of degree."
That's not a difference of degree--that's a qualitative difference. Lies, stonewalling, going before court to argue that you actually own the materials that belong to the government, etc. are actually pretty bad, and far different from realizing you accidentally have some confidential stuff.
There are more than 50 million "classified" documents floating around the government at any given time. The NARA managed to lose more than a thousand BOXES of them during the Bush/Cheney years. I'm sure the vast majority pose no threat whatsoever to "national security", and the hysteria over them which was first generated by Hillary's use of a private server is absurd.
Josh Marshall has a pretty good thread on this. There are a few points:
1) the government classifies way too much stuff, slapping that label on virtually everything
2) Presidents and Vice Presidents staffs have to pack up millions of pages of stuff and inevitably get some they shouldn’t take.
3) most likely Biden and Pence have a bunch of low level things like daily briefs vs Trump who had stuff at the highest level
4) Biden and Pence staffs found stuff, reported it and returned it. Trump denied having stuff and then refused to return it
5) The Media is doing a lousy job explaining why what Trump did is different and far more suspicious and serious
All good points, and all very true.
Regarding (1), you don't get in trouble for erring on the side of keeping something confidential, so yeah, plenty of stuff that isn't confidential or particularly sensitive gets slapped with a "classified" label. It doesn't mean that it's important or valuable.
If I remember correctly some of the classified stuff Hillary had were summaries of News paper articles
Recently I read that govt. copies of news articles about specific information that is classified must be classified. Then there are items that are declared to be classified long after they have been created (so someone could have taken home an item that was not classified at the time, but it was declared classified subsequently; of course, that would be very unlikely to have a "classified" label on it!)
Pretty sure that was he case with most (or all?) of Hillary’s emails, they weren’t classified at the time she received them, they got classified later
Furthermore, as I heard it (I think on NPR), the "Hillary Emails" were reviewed for classification status and sent through multiple "classifiers", all of whom operated under different rules, until enough of the messages were "found" to be "classified" by SOMEBODY -- long after the time when the emails had been actually sent.
Absurdly, an email sent to her by a private citizen about Iraqi politics was put in the "shoulda been classified!" column.
For the life of me, I can't understand why the Dept of Justice doesn't tell Americans what was in the documents retained by both Trump and Biden (and now Pence). Surely they can describe them well enough for people to evaluate their importance, without posing the "risks to national security" they harp on?
Trump, for example, is supposed to have taken the originals of his correspondence with Kim Jong-Un, important foreign policy documents of which apparently no copies exist. That would be a far more serious offence than having a copy of a widely-distributed intelligence briefing that had accidentally got filed with a bunch of non-classified material. The complete absence of information about what these documents were provides the perfect context for all kinds of hysterical narratives to be spun, and it's all so unnecessary.
The basic problem is that while Josh Marshall is PROBABLY right about the Biden and Pence docs being low level docs and the Trump docs being important docs, there's no way to know if he's ACTUALLY right, because the government doesn't want to disclose the classified information. And that gets back to the government classifying way too much information, which is true but not something DOJ lawyers can decide to disobey in this case.
So Marshall's point about the press is dead wrong (and indeed is a wonderful example of a liberal pundit who knows better just wishing the press would carry Democrats' water for them). The press can't report definitively that the documents Biden (or Pence) had were low level documents, because the press doesn't know this. We all assume this (myself included), but absent an actual leak of all the documents' content we can't know this. And BTW, I want to make clear this isn't just a theoretical point- it's actually entirely possible that Biden or Pence carelessly took an important document and kept it. So if the New York Times comes out and reports what Marshall wants them to report, to serve Marshall's goal of helping Democrats get elected, and it turns out to be wrong, it would be very bad for the Times. They aren't going to do this.
This whole situation sucks, because I get the problems with false equivalence. But sometimes there are no good solutions. Unless and until the government does a massive declassification, the argument that the Biden documents were all minor is not available to the press.
"The press can't report definitively that the documents Biden (or Pence) had were low level documents, because the press doesn't know this."
Well, the press could readily explain that while millions upon millions of documents are "classified" the vast majority of them are not particularly sensitive. I'm sure they could quote a former (or present!) federal official who could say that while it's important to maintain security it's also important to maintain perspective.
I'll bet you Obama has exactly zero classified documents in his personal possession. The only classified docs he'll have will be in possession of his presidential library storage -- with NARA.
I'd bet he has some. Of the millions upon millions of pages of material that cross the Oval Office during 8 years' of presidency, how many non-confidential documents do you think the President gets? It's entirely possible that some get mixed in when the corpus gets ported away when the President leaves the WH, even before you get to stuff that was improperly labeled as classified despite never being confidential, or materials that were subsequently declassified but never relabeled.
Now, I bet that Obama doesn't have any *significant* residual classified docs. It's been 6 years, too, so even anything that might have been important way back when is probably stale now.
Dude was one of the straightest arrows ever. He's not the type to do, in his own words, "stupid shit", even by accident.
He's a straight arrow, sure, but he's not a god. Maintaining awareness of millions documents comprising tens of millions of pages is not a feat that a meat-brained human can actually do--particularly one whose day-today job involved considerations an order of magnitude more taxing/serious than bureaucratic document control.
Systems are needed, relying on hundreds of other people putting in thousands/tens of thousands of work-hours. It's not possible for that sort of thing to completely avoid any mistakes.
I'm not saying he's invulnerable to errors. I'm saying he's never going to do stupid shit that would result in the accidental retention of classified docs at his premises.
There is a unique qualification about not-being-white (or being female): You always have to do better just to be equal.
They handed over 250TB of emails and digital data and over 1.5B documents to NARA. This is not the Secret Service, this is the follow-the-rules-by-the-book team who would have collected every last piece of trash found in the White House and deposited it into the Archives, just in case.
I will apologize and endure mockery over this if it comes out that he accidentally retained classified docs. But this was the cleanest, most upright administration, ever.
What is buried in Nixon's grave!? Is he even in there!!
Heard some ahole I work with Sat those words immediately. OBama has a million of them! Stupidest damn people in the world.
I think Dick Cheney is due for a visit from the authorities.
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Pompeo
I would bet ten dollars that most or all of these documents were left behind by sloppy briefers who failed to make sure they got back all the documents they were using to brief Biden, Pence, yeah even probably Obama. All these folks get regular security briefings using classified docs. Probably the Clintons have some as well. This is totally different from Trump, who took the documents from the White House.
You managed to forget both Bushes. And the Reagan Library. And all of the former VP's.
First, Trump got a special counsel.
Next, Biden got a special counsel.
Now, does Pence get a special counsel? If not, why not? It’s the same thing, right? You could say his case may be different than Trump’s and be right. But his case is more likely exactly the same as Biden’s. In one way, Pence is more like Trump. He is not the current president and therefore indictable. Fwiw, all are likely candidates in 2024. Treat them equally. Correct?
Actually, DOJ screwed up. It made a political decision in appointing the special counsel for Biden. In doing so, it drew an equivalency in the public mind between what Trump did and what Biden did, when the two cases, from a criminal standpoint, are quite different. That, on net, has put a cloud over Biden that should not exist. If DOJ fails to appoint a special counsel for Pence, it further associates the Trump and Biden cases, and distinguishes the Pence case as something different, a lesser concern. When, if anything, it’s the Trump case that should be singled out for possible criminal indictment. DOJ has fucked up royally.
Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, will be who posterity thinks got screwed the worst.
Maybe they can give all the non-Trump cases to the person currently investigating the Biden situation. IOW, consolidate. I don't think it's tenable to not investigate other ex presidents, ex vice presidents, as their cases come to light.
Trump, by virtue of the volume of material and his apparent obstruction/non-cooperation, as usual merits special treatment.
Fairest outcome at the point would be for Robert Hur's scope to expand to include Pence in his investigation, with probable outcome that Biden and Pence cases conclude with Biden and Pence being cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
"DOJ has fucked up royally."
+1000
Trump got into a mess due to his refusal to return the documents and then further attempts to hide them and lie about them, not for merely having them. That is what triggered the DOJ's involvement in his case. There was zero need to do the same for Biden other than some needless desire to appear impartial, when appointing a special counsel, and a Trump appointee nonetheless, actually made the DOJ appear biased and attempting to even the score by any means necessary.
Did you know that US presidents (and I assume vice presidents) don’t have to undergo background checks and get security clearances in order to hold office?
I’ll bet you every president back to - whenever classified documents began - have taken classified documents home and not returned them.
This is just sloppiness because presidents are not held to the same standards as the common guy who works defense contracts. I had to hold security clearances in two of my financial positions with government contractors.
I’d like to see this changed. If presidential candidates were required to get security clearances, there would have been no *president Trump.
Like +127.
Trump in any other role would not have been approved for a clearance. But as president, he had the authority to force approval for others such as Jared Kushner, who was otherwise being denied, and whom Saudi Arabia's MBS boasted was his source for receiving US classified information.
This doesn't really enter the conversation, which gets bogged down in nitpicky details that the public hardly pays attention to. The general impression is "everybody does it, see." But why the Trump documents are a worry and why the Biden and Pence documents are not is this: With Trump, the possibility or likelihood that important classified material will fall into the hands our adversaries is great, possibly approaching 100%. With Biden and Pence, the odds are close to 0%.
"But why the Trump documents are a worry and why the Biden and Pence documents are not is this . . ."
There's also the reality that Biden _currently is the president_ and so concerns about him having classified information ring a little hollow. Like all those stupid winger calls for the FBI to raid the Whitehouse, as if there _shouldnt't_ be all sorts of classified info there.
"This is just sloppiness because presidents are not held to the same standards as the common guy who works defense contracts."
In fairness, the regular Joe that has security clearance only sees documents pertaining to the specific needs of the position. Presidents and VPs on the other hand get briefings about every single thing the government does.
It's like equating someone saying I never misplace a single tool in my toolbox, compared to the person in charge of every tool, machinery, or piece of equipment at a large workshop with thousands of employees.
Did you know that US presidents (and I assume vice presidents) don’t have to undergo background checks and get security clearances in order to hold office?
Yes, I did know this. Eligibility for those offices in stipulated in the constitution, which would have to be amended (2/3rds Congress, 3/4ths state legislatures) to require background checks. And how would it even work? Require background checks* to enter primaries? Or, in the event the general election winner fails a background check, hold another election with a different candidate (or proclaim the loser victorious)?
*I've long been appalled at how little the two major parties do in terms of vetting candidates for the presidency. This hasn't been a problem with Democrats. But in any sane polity Trump would simply have been told by the GOP he was ineligible for their nomination, because of his failure to withstand vetting. AFAIK the leadership of the two parties basically does nothing in terms of screening their presidential aspirants. I I'm really hoping Alex Jones throws his hat in the ring. Maybe Ted Nugent. The last time I recall a party establishment actually taking action was in the 80s, when the DNC told David Duke they wouldn't seat any convention delegates he might win.
Our system is utterly dysfunctional.
I say, go after them all. Everly living president! And jail the orange genius for withholding and lying.
here here. Exactly right.
Perhapes George W has proof of Iraq WMDs somewhere hidden amoung his paint brushes. They should also issue a no knock warrent for all of Jimmy's secret documents. Probably has stuff from his Navy days on submarine nuclear propulsion from the 1950's. I'm sure his 98 year old heart would not be an issue when they batter down his door.
Lest we forget, Biden and Pence were likely inadvertant retention of documents or a result of staff errors. Orange Jesus retention, stonewalling, lying to the National Archives, DOJ, and FBI (or causing an employee to lie for him) for 1 1/2 years were all deliberative, willful acts. As was the utter bull shit about prior declassification.
Obstruction of justice is his motas operendi, as is making sure that someone else does his dirty work and is the fall guy.
I think what we are learning here is that the system for tracking confidential documents and auditing what went out compared to what came back is atrocious and in need of repair. And it doesn't seem like that big a problem. A good librarian should be able to solve it.
Now that they're finding classified documents everywhere, the FBI wants to schedule a search of my house for next Thursday.
Nathan Lane Monday night on Colbert (you can find it easily on Youtube): "I went through my garage and threw out all the classified documents that didn't spark joy."