Is Biden's secret document theft case an example of the DOJs double standard?

Factfinder

@just_sayin

Does seem like a double standard. If biden is too senile to remember, why is he still president?

just_sayin

Factfinder said:

@just_sayin

Does seem like a double standard. If biden is too senile to remember, why is he still president?

The prosecutor alluded to not prosecuting Biden for his crimes because of his bad memory.  From KiRO 7 news:

“Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report said.
“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

MayCaesar

Factfinder said:

@just_sayin

Does seem like a double standard. If biden is too senile to remember, why is he still president?

This was my first thought as well. President of the US is arguably the most influential job in the world... In large private corporations which do not have even 1% of the influence the US government has CEOs are nitpicked from hundreds of outstanding candidates who have to excel in virtually everything - the brightest minds fail to get these positions because of one tiny imperfection. So why is someone whose memory is worse than that of 99.9% of the population running the country?

just_sayin

The DOJ prosecutor said President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen”.  Yet, said they would not prosecute him because of his 'diminished faculties and a faulty memory'.  It seems if you are a Democrat that you can steal secret documents from your country, keep them for many years and even read them to your ghostwriter, be deemed  to mentally impaired to stand trial and then run for president again.  This is not justice.  If Biden's diminished faculties are such that he can't stand trial as the DOJ suggests, then the 25th amendment needs to be invoked and he needs to be removed.

Bogan

It is just another glaring example of how the Deep State has corrupted important government departments like the Justice Department.      Anyone with a functioning brain can see which side of politics is a danger to democracy.     The irony of the Justice Department claiming that Joe is too senile to prosecute while they support his candidacy in the next Presidential election is so funny that even Monty Python could not think that up.     32% of Americans think that Joe is doing a good job.     From that statistic, one can reasonably infer that 32% of the US electorate have either very low IQ's, or they are addicted to methamphetamines or crack cocaine.   

just_sayin

Yesterday Biden had his 'I'm sane, no really don't laugh, I'm sane - don't listen to the authorities' speech where he said just the day before, he and his dead friends Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterrand were talking about the US southern border with Egypt.  Either lock him up or throw him out.

GiantMan

Are Democrats still defending the president?  If so, why?  He obviously took secret documents and read them to his ghostwriter.  Does the fact he can't remember it make it any better?

Openminded

@just_sayin @MayCaesar @Bogan @GiantMan

So Joe Biden was caught with illegally stolen secret documents in his garage, which were not secured.  He was also caught with stolen secret docs at his Chinese funded foundation and caught with stolen secret docs at another residence.  Yet the prosecutor who says Biden's memory is dangerously bad as he couldn't remember when he became vice-president or when his tenure as VP ended, choose not to prosecute a man who undeniably STOLE secret documents and failed to return them until his home was raided by the FBI.  Yet the undeniable theft is not being prosecuted.  Do you think this is yet another example of prejudice in the DOJ or the right decision to ignore Biden's lawbreaking?

Really people? Nobody bothered to even look into this post? Love your biased and inaccurate paragraph - mighty intelligent and mature of you. America we have a problem. I posted two articles in hopes someone would read them. 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-biden-documents-differences-special-counsel

Excerpts from the article:

Why Trump was charged and Biden wasn't

While the special counsel "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials" in a way that "present[ed] serious risks to national security," the report said that "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter." Justice Department policy states that sitting presidents cannot be charged criminally, but Hur said his team would have reached the same conclusion even if it didn't.

Hur himself laid out the distinctions between Trump and Mr. Biden's cases.

"Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation," the report said.

It was that cooperation, combined with how the investigation began and the evidence of his knowledge and intent, that set the cases apart, according to Hur. 

Trump, on the other hand, is accused of falsely claiming he was cooperating fully with the FBI and had turned over all documents sought by investigators, even though he continued to keep dozens of them.

"[A]fter being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it," Hur's report stated.

While Smith determined he had gathered enough evidence to bring charges against Trump, Hur wrote that "[t]he evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." The special counsel raised various potential defenses the president could raise at trial, including that Mr. Biden "did not willfully retain these documents and that they could plausibly have been brought to these locations by mistake." He also commented that Mr. Biden might come across to a jury as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

In short, Hur and Smith — both federal prosecutors with the ultimate goal of winning convictions if charges are warranted — reached different conclusions based on their views of the evidence before them.

Fredericksen, the former federal prosecutor, said,  "The decision not to prosecute is the obvious right one" based on Mr. Biden's cooperation and the evidence in the report.

"It is not a close call at all. It is an easy decision to make," he added. 

Prosecutors "don't bring cases like this," namely "when someone voluntarily steps forward," Fredericksen said. One of the most difficult aspects of a case for a federal prosecutor is proving and establishing the intent of a defendant, he argued. According to his view of the report, "There is no evidence that the president at any time had any significant awareness that what he was doing was wrong."

But with Trump, "The proof of obstruction, lying, as alleged in the indictment … That is what reflects the intentionality of the conduct," Fredericksen said. 

Parlatore, Trump's former attorney,  said he did not think charges were warranted in either case. 

Instead, Parlatore argued the Trump and Biden investigations demonstrated a greater need for oversight over the handling of classified records in the federal government, which he said remains a "vulnerability." 

"I don't think Trump should have been charged. I don't think Biden should have been charged," Parlatore said. "I think this is something that needs to get fixed procedurally."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/us/politics/biden-trump-classified-documents.html

Exerpts:

How are the situations similar?

The investigations involved the discovery that papers containing classified information had improperly accompanied Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden after they left office — Mr. Trump when he left the presidency in 2021, and Mr. Biden when he left the vice presidency in 2017 — and that were being stored improperly. In both cases, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate.

How did the two men’s responses differ?

In his report, Mr. Hur noted that “several material distinctions” between the two cases were clear and that the allegations against Mr. Trump, if proved, “present serious aggravating facts,” unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden. In particular, he said, the two men had responded very differently to the situations.

“Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” Mr. Hur said in the report. “According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

He added: “In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”

What was the biggest difference in evidence?

To prove a crime, it is necessary to establish whether the unauthorized retention of the sensitive files was “willful.” Because staff members packed up their belongings, prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump knew they possessed the materials after they were out of office, and there was a significant disparity in the available evidence.

As detailed in the indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, the investigation of Mr. Trump uncovered substantial evidence indicating that he knew he still had government documents that were marked as classified and nevertheless failed to give them all back, even after being subpoenaed for them. He is accused of actively conspiring to keep them concealed.

By contrast, while Mr. Hur found some evidence that pointed toward the possibility that Mr. Biden knew he had classified documents, the special counsel concluded that the facts were not enough to actually prove it.

For example, the most important papers, which involved the Afghanistan war, were found with a jumble of unrelated material in a cardboard box in Mr. Biden’s garage. But Mr. Biden denied any knowledge of the papers or how they got there, speculating that people packing up the vice president’s mansion must have thrown them together.

“We do not know why, how or by whom the documents were placed in the box,” Mr. Hur wrote.

A separate issue involved notebooks in which Mr. Biden kept handwritten diary entries or notes on both his personal life and his official activities, including accounts of national security meetings involving classified matters.

While criticizing Mr. Biden for not storing them securely, Mr. Hur concluded that the former vice president had a good reason to believe he was authorized to keep them as personal property, citing precedents including former President Ronald Reagan.

What were the files in each case?

In Mr. Trump’s case, several hundred classified government files — along with thousands of unclassified documents and photos — ended up at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the White House.

After a protracted effort, the National Archives and Records Administration was permitted to retrieve 15 boxes in early 2022, in which it discovered 197 classified files. In response to a subpoena for any remaining such records, Mr. Trump returned another batch. But an F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago uncovered yet another 102 classified documents.

According to court filings, the topics included intelligence briefings about various countries, including numerous ones about military matters, one about a country’s nuclear capabilities, and a contingency plan for attacking Iran.

An appendix to Mr. Hur’s report lists about 50 files from Mr. Biden’s vice presidency that were recovered, mostly involving the Afghanistan war, that were either marked as classified or that investigators later determined contained classified information, along with a few from trips abroad he took when a senator dating back to the 1970s.

Where were the files?

In Mr. Trump’s case, files were found in a locked storage room at Mar-a-Lago and in drawers in his office. The investigation also uncovered photographs showing some had been heaped in a bathroom and in a ballroom of the club

In Mr. Biden’s case, files ended up in a storage closet of an office suite at his Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, that he used after he left the vice presidency and before running for president, and in his house in Delaware. The most important Afghanistan war papers were in a folder in a cardboard box in his garage.

What about the recordings?

One of the parallels between the two cases is that investigators in each obtained recordings in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden seemed to indicate that they knew they had classified information while out of office and talking to ghostwriters for books. But Mr. Trump’s reference was specific and investigators were able to connect it to a specific file, while Mr. Biden’s was vague and they were not able to identify what material he was talking about.

One of the charges against Mr. Trump involves a battle plan related to attacking Iran that he is accused of showing to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster. In an audio recording of that meeting, Mr. Trump can be heard rustling paper, and saying “as president I could have declassified it” but that it was still “secret.”

In an updated indictment, prosecutors said that very document was found among the 15 boxes of files that Mr. Trump returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in January 2022, months after the agency had sought to get them back. (Mr. Trump has claimed he never had the Iran battle plan at that meeting and was referring to something else.)

In Mr. Biden’s case, Mr. Hur obtained audio recordings and transcripts of the former vice president talking to a ghostwriter with whom he was working on a memoir about his deceased son, Beau, in 2017 after Mr. Biden left office and while he was living in a rented house in Virginia.

Mr. Biden read aloud passages from his notebooks to the ghostwriter, in one case showing him a word he could not read while warning the writer that material might be classified. On another occasion, Mr. Biden told the writer he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” The context was a discussion of a memo Mr. Biden had sent President Barack Obama opposing Mr. Obama’s decision to send a surge of troops into Afghanistan in 2009.

But while Mr. Hur explored the possibility that Mr. Biden’s offhand remark might have been a reference to the specific classified documents about the Afghanistan war that were later discovered in the Delaware garage — which, if true, would make the recording evidence of willful retention — he found no proof those files had been in the Virginia house.

Mr. Biden, for his part, said he had instead been referring to finding a copy of his unclassified memo to Mr. Obama, and that he had incorrectly characterized what made it sensitive and so not something he wanted the writer to talk about.

“I said ‘classified’; I should have said it should be ‘private,’ because it was a contact between a president and vice president as to what was going on,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference Thursday night, after Mr. Hur’s report came out. “That’s what he’s referring to. It was not classified information in that document. That was not classified.”

Mr. Hur also concluded that Mr. Biden’s reading from the notebooks fell short of proof that he had intentionally disclosed something that was specifically classified, and that overall the evidence in the matter was “insufficient to meet the government’s burden in a criminal prosecution.”

Openminded

@just_sayin

Well git yer weapons ready for the civil war!

Openminded

@Bogan

What´s the Deep State?

Openminded

@GiantMan

Did you read anything on this? If not, I suggest you do. 

just_sayin

Openminded said:

@just_sayin

Well git yer weapons ready for the civil war!

Granny Openminded, a few observations.  1)  The DOJ says  "Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home." 

2) There were decades of stolen documents found:  "The classified documents and other materials recovered in this case spanned Mr. Biden's career in national public life."

3)  Top secret materials were kept in unsecured area and illegally shared that information: " Mr. Biden kept these 2 classified notebooks in unsecured and unauthorized spaces at his Virginia and Delaware homes and used some of the notebooks as reference material for his second memoir, Promise Me, Dad, which was published in 2017. To our knowledge, no one has identified any classified information published in Promise Me, Dad, but Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information, from those notebooks with his ghostwriter."

4)  Biden admitted to his ghostwriter that he knew he had top secret documents illegally in his possession:  "Mr. Biden wrote his 2007 and 2017 memoirs with the help of a ghostwriter. In a recorded conversation with his ghostwriter in February 2017, about a month after he left office, Mr. Biden said, while referencing his 2009 Thanksgiving memo, that he had "just found all the classified stuff downstairs." At the time, he was renting a home in Virginia, where he met his ghostwriter to work on his second memoir. Downstairs from where they met was Mr. Biden's office, where he stored his papers. He moved out of the Virginia home in 2019, consolidating his belongings in Delaware-where FBI agents later found marked classified documents about the Afghanistan troop surge in his garage."

5)  Biden did not go tot he FBI- the FBI came to him.  As such Biden did commit multiple felonies.  

6)  A rationale given for not prosecuting Biden for his crimes is his diminished mental capacity.  

If Biden is too mentally deficient to be prosecuted for decades of document theft and sharing top secret information with persons not cleared, then he is to mentally deficient to serve as president.

Openminded

Argument Topic: Granny Openminded, a few observations. 1) The DOJ says

@just_sayin

Hey bully boyi! Great! Now can you post the truth about Trump´s documents case? You did a great job analyzing Bidens.

Bogan

The “deep state” refers to powerful, non elected top government officials who use their entrenched power to either frustrate the decisions of the elected government, stage a coup by assassinating the President of the USA (John F. Kennedy), spy on political opponents, influence elections, and protect those in the elected government that they see as their tame dogs and protectors.       One of the best examples today of a “deep state” is Pakistan’s intelligence services which are renowned for completely ignoring the wishes of the Pakistani government, and engaging in acts their own government disapproves of. 

 Another glaring example is the USA today, where the FBI used anti terrorism laws to spy on President Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Guiliani, and then use embedded FBI agents within social media organisations to kill the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop.   This meant that a US government organisation conspired to illegally interfere in a US election.   Other examples are the 91 charges filed against the USA’s leading Presidential candidate by crooked DA’s like Fanni Willis, and the recent attempt by the Colorado bar association to have Donald Trump removed from the Colorado Presidential election ballot, using a spurious legal argument which hardly impressed the US Supreme Court.     It would not be surprising if Colorado loses that one 9-0.  

Bogan

@Openminded

Why Trump was charged and Biden wasn't

While the special counsel "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials" in a way that "present[ed] serious risks to national security," the report said that "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter." Justice Department policy states that sitting presidents cannot be charged criminally, but Hur said his team would have reached the same conclusion even if it didn't.

Hur himself laid out the distinctions between Trump and Mr. Biden's cases.

"Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation," the report said.

It was that cooperation, combined with how the investigation began and the evidence of his knowledge and intent, that set the cases apart, according to Hur. 

Trump, on the other hand, is accused of falsely claiming he was cooperating fully with the FBI and had turned over all documents sought by investigators, even though he continued to keep dozens of them.

"[A]fter being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it," Hur's report stated.

While Smith determined he had gathered enough evidence to bring charges against Trump, Hur wrote that "[t]he evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt." The special counsel raised various potential defenses the president could raise at trial, including that Mr. Biden "did not willfully retain these documents and that they could plausibly have been brought to these locations by mistake." He also commented that Mr. Biden might come across to a jury as a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

In short, Hur and Smith — both federal prosecutors with the ultimate goal of winning convictions if charges are warranted — reached different conclusions based on their views of the evidence before them.

Fredericksen, the former federal prosecutor, said,  "The decision not to prosecute is the obvious right one" based on Mr. Biden's cooperation and the evidence in the report.

"It is not a close call at all. It is an easy decision to make," he added. 

Prosecutors "don't bring cases like this," namely "when someone voluntarily steps forward," Fredericksen said. One of the most difficult aspects of a case for a federal prosecutor is proving and establishing the intent of a defendant, he argued. According to his view of the report, "There is no evidence that the president at any time had any significant awareness that what he was doing was wrong."

But with Trump, "The proof of obstruction, lying, as alleged in the indictment … That is what reflects the intentionality of the conduct," Fredericksen said. 

Parlatore, Trump's former attorney,  said he did not think charges were warranted in either case. 

Instead, Parlatore argued the Trump and Biden investigations demonstrated a greater need for oversight over the handling of classified records in the federal government, which he said remains a "vulnerability." 

"I don't think Trump should have been charged. I don't think Biden should have been charged," Parlatore said. "I think this is something that needs to get fixed procedurally."

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/10/us/politics/biden-trump-classified-documents.html

Exerpts:

How are the situations similar?

The investigations involved the discovery that papers containing classified information had improperly accompanied Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden after they left office — Mr. Trump when he left the presidency in 2021, and Mr. Biden when he left the vice presidency in 2017 — and that were being stored improperly. In both cases, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate.

How did the two men’s responses differ?

In his report, Mr. Hur noted that “several material distinctions” between the two cases were clear and that the allegations against Mr. Trump, if proved, “present serious aggravating facts,” unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden. In particular, he said, the two men had responded very differently to the situations.

“Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite,” Mr. Hur said in the report. “According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it.”

He added: “In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.”

What was the biggest difference in evidence?

To prove a crime, it is necessary to establish whether the unauthorized retention of the sensitive files was “willful.” Because staff members packed up their belongings, prosecutors would need to show that Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump knew they possessed the materials after they were out of office, and there was a significant disparity in the available evidence.

As detailed in the indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, the investigation of Mr. Trump uncovered substantial evidence indicating that he knew he still had government documents that were marked as classified and nevertheless failed to give them all back, even after being subpoenaed for them. He is accused of actively conspiring to keep them concealed.

By contrast, while Mr. Hur found some evidence that pointed toward the possibility that Mr. Biden knew he had classified documents, the special counsel concluded that the facts were not enough to actually prove it.

For example, the most important papers, which involved the Afghanistan war, were found with a jumble of unrelated material in a cardboard box in Mr. Biden’s garage. But Mr. Biden denied any knowledge of the papers or how they got there, speculating that people packing up the vice president’s mansion must have thrown them together.

“We do not know why, how or by whom the documents were placed in the box,” Mr. Hur wrote.

A separate issue involved notebooks in which Mr. Biden kept handwritten diary entries or notes on both his personal life and his official activities, including accounts of national security meetings involving classified matters.

While criticizing Mr. Biden for not storing them securely, Mr. Hur concluded that the former vice president had a good reason to believe he was authorized to keep them as personal property, citing precedents including former President Ronald Reagan.

What were the files in each case?

In Mr. Trump’s case, several hundred classified government files — along with thousands of unclassified documents and photos — ended up at his Florida club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, after he left the White House.

After a protracted effort, the National Archives and Records Administration was permitted to retrieve 15 boxes in early 2022, in which it discovered 197 classified files. In response to a subpoena for any remaining such records, Mr. Trump returned another batch. But an F.B.I. search of Mar-a-Lago uncovered yet another 102 classified documents.

According to court filings, the topics included intelligence briefings about various countries, including numerous ones about military matters, one about a country’s nuclear capabilities, and a contingency plan for attacking Iran.

An appendix to Mr. Hur’s report lists about 50 files from Mr. Biden’s vice presidency that were recovered, mostly involving the Afghanistan war, that were either marked as classified or that investigators later determined contained classified information, along with a few from trips abroad he took when a senator dating back to the 1970s.

Where were the files?

In Mr. Trump’s case, files were found in a locked storage room at Mar-a-Lago and in drawers in his office. The investigation also uncovered photographs showing some had been heaped in a bathroom and in a ballroom of the club

In Mr. Biden’s case, files ended up in a storage closet of an office suite at his Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, that he used after he left the vice presidency and before running for president, and in his house in Delaware. The most important Afghanistan war papers were in a folder in a cardboard box in his garage.

What about the recordings?

One of the parallels between the two cases is that investigators in each obtained recordings in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden seemed to indicate that they knew they had classified information while out of office and talking to ghostwriters for books. But Mr. Trump’s reference was specific and investigators were able to connect it to a specific file, while Mr. Biden’s was vague and they were not able to identify what material he was talking about.

One of the charges against Mr. Trump involves a battle plan related to attacking Iran that he is accused of showing to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster. In an audio recording of that meeting, Mr. Trump can be heard rustling paper, and saying “as president I could have declassified it” but that it was still “secret.”

In an updated indictment, prosecutors said that very document was found among the 15 boxes of files that Mr. Trump returned to the National Archives and Records Administration in January 2022, months after the agency had sought to get them back. (Mr. Trump has claimed he never had the Iran battle plan at that meeting and was referring to something else.)

In Mr. Biden’s case, Mr. Hur obtained audio recordings and transcripts of the former vice president talking to a ghostwriter with whom he was working on a memoir about his deceased son, Beau, in 2017 after Mr. Biden left office and while he was living in a rented house in Virginia.

Mr. Biden read aloud passages from his notebooks to the ghostwriter, in one case showing him a word he could not read while warning the writer that material might be classified. On another occasion, Mr. Biden told the writer he had “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” The context was a discussion of a memo Mr. Biden had sent President Barack Obama opposing Mr. Obama’s decision to send a surge of troops into Afghanistan in 2009.

But while Mr. Hur explored the possibility that Mr. Biden’s offhand remark might have been a reference to the specific classified documents about the Afghanistan war that were later discovered in the Delaware garage — which, if true, would make the recording evidence of willful retention — he found no proof those files had been in the Virginia house.

Mr. Biden, for his part, said he had instead been referring to finding a copy of his unclassified memo to Mr. Obama, and that he had incorrectly characterized what made it sensitive and so not something he wanted the writer to talk about.

“I said ‘classified’; I should have said it should be ‘private,’ because it was a contact between a president and vice president as to what was going on,” Mr. Biden said at a news conference Thursday night, after Mr. Hur’s report came out. “That’s what he’s referring to. It was not classified information in that document. That was not classified.”

Mr. Hur also concluded that Mr. Biden’s reading from the notebooks fell short of proof that he had intentionally disclosed something that was specifically classified, and that overall the evidence in the matter was “insufficient to meet the government’s burden in a criminal prosecution.”

This "logic" would not impress anybody with triple digit IQ.     As a former President, Donald Trump had a right to keep secret documents.     Biden never had that privilege, and the documents had to be stolen from a "skiff".   Stealing documents from a skiff is a serious criminal offence.       What we have is yet another example of a two tiered justice system, where the deep state goes after it's political enemies with everything it has, while simultaneously whistling "dixie" and looking the other way at serious criminal behavior engaged on by their tame political protector.    And is drug addled son.   

Openminded

@Bogan

This "logic" would not impress anybody with triple digit IQ.     As a former President, Donald Trump had a right to keep secret documents.     Biden never had that privilege, and the documents had to be stolen from a "skiff".   Stealing documents from a skiff is a serious criminal offence.       What we have is yet another example of a two tiered justice system, where the deep state goes after it's political enemies with everything it has, while simultaneously whistling "dixie" and looking the other way at serious criminal behavior engaged on by their tame political protector.    And is drug addled son. 

The original post was misleading, full of disinformation, and just plain ignorant. Sorry, but that´s what it is.

Your reply back is just plain ignorant. Nothing in it is based in reality - no truth, no intelligence, no critical thinking skills used. Congrats. That´s what cult leaders steal from you.

For nobody to challenge it, is disappointing. I posted two articles and apparently you still feel the need to protect Little Donnie Chaos.

There is no two-tiered system. 

You don´t get it do you? I urge you to go back to his early months of his presidency. He manipulated millions into trusting NOBODY but himself. He actually said ¨I alone can fix it.¨ Really? Only a narcissist with authoritarian goals would say that. But ya´ll believed it because he knew how to manipulate the angry crowd. He stoked suspicion in all government entities labeling the government as the deep state. He especially set up the DOJ as evil because he knew he was going to be challenged by it being the thug he is. Ya´ll sadly fell for it.  He´s not the winning ticket. And though he is entertaining and stokes anger which can be empowering, is that really what a president should be?

Read below. If you don´t get it, or refuse to believe it, then you´re in a cult, conned by a con artist and a fraud whose goal now is sustaining complete control.

Where do you all get your information on Trump? From his trump rallies? Sweet J_E_S_U_S. Grow up. Stop using aggressiveness, immature language and labels. It might be fun, but join a club - that´s not what politics is for.

And for MayCaesar (who I had some respect for his balanced posts) to not challenge this OP as being full of disinformation and plain ignorance is troubling to me. He seemed to go right along with it because Trump may be his choice.

I´m beginning to totally distrust this site due to the extreme opinions and views. Ya´ll want to vote for Trump? Then ya´ll better prepare for Authoritarianism - Fascism.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-biden-documents-differences-special-counsel

Excerpts from the article:

Why Trump was charged and Biden wasn't

While the special counsel "uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials" in a way that "present[ed] serious risks to national security," the report said that "no criminal charges are warranted in this matter." Justice Department policy states that sitting presidents cannot be charged criminally, but Hur said his team would have reached the same conclusion even if it didn't.

Hur himself laid out the distinctions between Trump and Mr. Biden's cases.

"Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview, and in other ways cooperated with the investigation," the report said.

It was that cooperation, combined with how the investigation began and the evidence of his knowledge and intent, that set the cases apart, according to Hur. 

Trump, on the other hand, is accused of falsely claiming he was cooperating fully with the FBI and had turned over all documents sought by investigators, even though he continued to keep dozens of them.

"[A]fter being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it," Hur's report stated.

HE OBSTRUCTED JUSTICE and this was determined by Hur, a Trump appointee.

 

Openminded

Argument Topic: So Joe Biden was caught with illegally stolen secret documents in his garage, which were not secured. He was also caught with stolen secret docs at his Chinese funded foundation and caught with stolen secret docs at another residence.

@Just_sayin

So Joe Biden was caught with illegally stolen secret documents in his garage, which were not secured.  He was also caught with stolen secret docs at his Chinese funded foundation and caught with stolen secret docs at another residence.  Yet the prosecutor who says Biden's memory is dangerously bad as he couldn't remember when he became vice-president or when his tenure as VP ended, choose not to prosecute a man who undeniably STOLE secret documents and failed to return them until his home was raided by the FBI.  Yet the undeniable theft is not being prosecuted.  Do you think this is yet another example of prejudice in the DOJ or the right decision to ignore Biden's lawbreaking?

Your OP was full of extreme lies and exaggeration. I would like for you to post proof on all that is italicized above.  If you cannot, you are setting yourself up for distrust. Who wants to listen to a ? Unless of course you think trumpism is a desirable trait.

Bogan

@Openminded ;  Unless of course you think trumpism is a desirable trait.   

The polls seem to indicate that most Americans think that "Trumpism" is a desirable trait.       Some of them once thought that "Bidenism" was a desirable trait, but the reality that the USA is now the laughing stock of the world, with tyrants taking advantage of US weakness, with "sanctuary cities" crying "please!   No more migrants!",  with "Defund the Police now seen as absolute insanity, and with the "transgeneder" movement now pisssing off 51% of the US population who are females, they now realise their mistake.  

just_sayin

Openminded said:

@Just_sayin

So Joe Biden was caught with illegally stolen secret documents in his garage, which were not secured.  He was also caught with stolen secret docs at his Chinese funded foundation and caught with stolen secret docs at another residence.  Yet the prosecutor who says Biden's memory is dangerously bad as he couldn't remember when he became vice-president or when his tenure as VP ended, choose not to prosecute a man who undeniably STOLE secret documents and failed to return them until his home was raided by the FBI.  Yet the undeniable theft is not being prosecuted.  Do you think this is yet another example of prejudice in the DOJ or the right decision to ignore Biden's lawbreaking?

Your OP was full of extreme lies and exaggeration. I would like for you to post proof on all that is italicized above.  If you cannot, you are setting yourself up for distrust. Who wants to listen to a ? Unless of course you think trumpism is a desirable trait.

choose not to prosecute a man who undeniably STOLE secret documents and failed to return them until his home was raided by the FBI.  Yet the undeniable theft 

Sure Granny, happy to help.  From the DOJ report:  

"Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home." 

Well that paragraph pretty much answered it all.  But I'll add more  

" Mr. Biden kept these 2 classified notebooks in unsecured and unauthorized spaces at his Virginia and Delaware homes and used some of the notebooks as reference material for his second memoir, Promise Me, Dad, which was published in 2017. To our knowledge, no one has identified any classified information published in Promise Me, Dad, but Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information, from those notebooks with his ghostwriter."

After learning of the special counsel's appointment in this matter, Mr. Biden's ghostwriter deleted audio recordings he had created of his discussions with Mr. Eiden during the writing of Mr. Biden's 2017 memoir. The recordings had significant evidentiary value.  After telling the Special Counsel's Office what he had done, the ghostwriter turned over his computer and external hard drive and consented to their search. Based on the FBI's analysis. it appears the FBI recovered all deleted audio files relating to the memoir, though portions of a few of the files appear to be missing, which is possible when forensic tools are used to recover deleted files. The ghostwriter kept, and did not delete or attempt to delete, his near-verbatim transcripts of the recordings and produced those transcripts to us, including for each of the incomplete recovered files. 

In his interviews, the ghostwriter offered plausible, innocent reasons for why he deleted the recordings. He also preserved his transcripts that contain some of the most incriminating information against Mr. Eiden-including his statement about finding "all the classified stuff downstairs" in 2017

On December 20, 2022, nearly seven weeks after the initial discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center. Bauer and Moore traveled to Mr. Biden·s personal residence in Wilmington, Delaware to search the garage for classified documents or other Obama-era presidential records.: They later explained that through discussions with current and former Biden staffers, they came to believe that documents from Mr. Biden's time as vice president may have been moved into the garage.  We considered the possibility that Mr. Biden alerted his counsel that classified documents were in the garage, but our investigation revealed no evidence of such a discussion because, it if happened, it would be protected by the attorney client privilege. Bauer searched a closet in the garage and found documents with classification markings inside a binder. 39 After Bauer made this discovery, Moore found documents with classification markings in an unsealed box in another area of the garage, including documents from 2009 relating to U.S. policy in Afghanistan.

Openminded

Argument Topic: The polls seem to indicate that most Americans think that "Trumpism" is a desirable trait.

@Bogan

The polls seem to indicate that most Americans think that "Trumpism" is a desirable trait.       Some of them once thought that "Bidenism" was a desirable trait, but the reality that the USA is now the laughing stock of the world, with tyrants taking advantage of US weakness, with "sanctuary cities" crying "please!   No more migrants!",  with "Defund the Police now seen as absolute insanity, and with the "transgeneder" movement now pisssing off 51% of the US population who are females, they now realise their mistake.

Just_sayin posted an exaggeration and complete lies about Biden. You know it. He knows it. That´s trumpism. Cheat, lie, exaggerate, bully, gaslight and demonize. Trump was found guilty of obstruction of justice once again for lying to the FBI about the documents. He refused to give them up, had them hidden, and lied again. You refuse to believe anything about Captain Chaos, the little boy who never grew up. He is a sick and dangerous narcissistic with an authoritarian nature. He conned you from the get go. He bragged about his greatness and said he alone will fix it. He stoked distrust and suspicion of all government entities; the FBI, and especially the DOJ because he knew he would break the rules and the law and the DOJ would challenge him and he knew his conned supporters would be by his side when it happened. He read his crowd of supporters, and knew just what to feed them to keep them adoring him. He stoked hate and demonized the immigrants, the government, the police, the blacks, the trans - and what I take personal offense to is being called Vermin. A Hitler term. He conned his supporters into thinking all was evil except him. Bam. That´s what Hitler did. They all fell in line. They all hated on the Jews and the Marxists. You all hate on the government, the immigrants and the leftists. He told you he would build a wall and Mexico would pay for it. haha Really? He said he would drain the swamp? haha He created the swamp. Many are in jail now. He told you he would fix healthcare. Really. Nothing. He told you he would give you tax breaks - yeah, that end next year but gave the rich a HUGE tax break for life or until Congress changes it. His tax breaks for the wealthy created a huge deficit. He is the ringleader and his soldiers are in jail (the insurrectionists). He told his people to ¨fight like hell or they won´t have a country¨. He told them to ¨stop the steal¨. They fell for it and over 500 are in jail with more to come. The Mastermind is free while his foot soldiers are in prison. You fell for him. You thought you would belong to a King and he would take care of you. He CONNED you. He lies daily. He steals from his supporters and uses $ for his growing legal fees. He sells trading cards with his image as a superhero? W T F? Who does that? And you believe him. He profiteers off his supporters. And you believe him. His rallies are nothing but trash, lies and full of hate and if it wasn´t so damn sad and scary, it would be funny. And he has filled his supporters with the same. I feel sorry for you and all his supporters.

He fed you lies. He stole your brains and your hearts. May you find your brains and peace in your souls.

Bogan

@Openminded

From the way that the polls are going, most Americans do not agree with you.       Most American remember that life under Trump was going quite well, and the USA went south almost the minute Biden and his puppeteers took over.  

Openminded

Argument Topic: From the way that the polls are going, most Americans do not agree with you.

@Bogan

Polls mean nothing yet.

Hitler was popular too. Then the holocaust happened. And then he wasn´t.

Openminded

@just_sayin

Sweet Bejesus. You don´t even know the difference between lies and truth.
As I said, I feel sorry for Trump disciples.
Grow up. Be decent and learn how to think critically Bully Boy. 

RickeyHoltsclaw

@just_sayin ; Yes...Biden's illegal document possession and divulging classified information charges by the DOJ are legitimate and a serious felony while Trump's possession of classified documents are protected/authorized by the Presidential Records Act. The DOJ's refusal to charge, indict, arrest, Biden under the pretenses of mental incompetence is a ruse and additional examples two-tiered system of Justice and election interference on the part of the vile Democrat establishment in DC. If Biden is not held responsible for stealing classified documents as a senator and VP...Trump's document case should be dismissed as well...this is Democrat Hypocrisy. God Bless Donald Trump and his beautiful family. 

 

Factfinder

@Openminded

...an exaggeration and complete lies about Biden.

Problem is there're turning out not to be complete exaggeration or lies...

The President has not been truthful about his family’s foreign business entanglements. • Weeks before the 2020 Presidential election, then-candidate Joe Biden said on national television that his family did not receive any money from China. That was a lie. Joe Biden not only knew about his family’s work with Chinese nationals, business associates have confirmed that Joe Biden met with his family’s Chinese associates—including while he was Vice President. • President Biden’s assertions that he never discussed business with his family are false. The Committees have also uncovered substantial information, including through whistleblowers, indicating that the Biden Administration has obstructed the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden. This information includes evidence that Department of Justice personnel blocked avenues of inquiry that could have led to evidence incriminating President Biden and impeded efforts to prosecute Hunter Biden for tax crimes relating to foreign business arrangements that could have implicated President Biden. https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/impeachment-inquiry-scoping-memo-final.pdf

just_sayin

Openminded said:

@just_sayin

Sweet Bejesus. You don´t even know the difference between lies and truth.
As I said, I feel sorry for Trump disciples.
Grow up. Be decent and learn how to think critically Bully Boy. 

I'll play along.  So you think the fact Biden illegally took (aka stole) SCIF documents over several decades, kept them at his homes in VA and Delaware, in unsecured locations, and read them to at least 1 individual who was not cleared for the information, and who even taped the incident, and acknowledged to the ghostwriter that he had SCIF documents unsecured in his home - is a lie?  All of that is in the DOJ report.  What are you calling a lie specifically?