Democrats Rally Behind Biden Amid Report on Age Concerns

[Chomper Higgot]

11 minutes ago, nauseus said:

 

"Trump supporters" did not produce this report. 

Who said they did?

[Negita43]

59 minutes ago, Cory1848 said:

Hur did not give a professional analysis; he's a lawyer, not a psychiatrist.

As he was a Trump appointee and even the judiciary is politicised (they are appointed by the President at the time) I's difficult not to think this was a report designed to thow more fuel and the fire.

[Yellowtail]

13 minutes ago, Negita43 said:

As he was a Trump appointee and even the judiciary is politicised (they are appointed by the President at the time) I's difficult not to think this was a report designed to thow more fuel and the fire.

A report that let's Biden off the hook for committing the same crime Trump is being prosecuted for?   

[Cory1848]

46 minutes ago, Negita43 said:

As he was a Trump appointee and even the judiciary is politicised (they are appointed by the President at the time) I's difficult not to think this was a report designed to thow more fuel and the fire.

Exactly. But, as I understand it, Merrick Garland had the power to excise Hur’s “editorializing” before the report was released, and he chose not to, not wanting to appear partisan (thinking of Bill Barr’s flagrant mishandling of the Mueller Report during the previous administration). When one side cheats at every opportunity and the other bends over backward trying to play fair, this is going to happen; Garland may have made a good Supreme Court justice, but he’s a weak attorney general.

[Yellowtail]

4 minutes ago, Cory1848 said:

Exactly. But, as I understand it, Merrick Garland had the power to excise Hur’s “editorializing” before the report was released, and he chose not to, not wanting to appear partisan (thinking of Bill Barr’s flagrant mishandling of the Mueller Report during the previous administration). When one side cheats at every opportunity and the other bends over backward trying to play fair, this is going to happen; Garland may have made a good Supreme Court justice, but he’s a weak attorney general.

He's anything but weak, and he'd have been a nightmare on the court. 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, Yellowtail said:

A report that let's Biden off the hook for committing the same crime Trump is being prosecuted for?   

 

Not even remotely the same in terms of magnitude and circumstances, as Hur's report made very clear on page 11:

 

" It is not our role to assess the criminal charges pending against Mr. Trump, but several material distinctions between Mr. Trump's case and Mr. Biden's are clear. Unlike the evidence involving Mr. Biden, the allegations set forth in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts.

 

"Most notably, after 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. 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."

 

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf

 

In short, night and day different, as has been clear to everyone except Trump partisans since the outset.

 

Edited February 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[nauseus]

1 hour ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Who said they did?

 

So your comment and supposition (below) was both off-topic and therefore  irrelevant then:

 

If Biden were as bad as a bet for the 2024 election as Trump supporters would have us believe, they’d be keeping very quiet about it until Biden is locked in to the candidacy.

 

Oddly, they’ve been doing their best to get Democrats to change Biden out for another candidate.

 

No real surprise, I suppose.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

Holder rips ‘inconsistent’ special counsel report on Biden classified documents report

"Former Attorney General Eric Holder went after a recently released special counsel report on President Biden’s retention of classified documents Friday.

 

“Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with longstanding [Department of Justice] traditions,” Holder said Friday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

 

Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, said if the report had been “subject to a normal [Department of Justice] review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.”

 

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4458372-holder-biden-special-counsel-report/

 

[Yellowtail]

5 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Holder rips ‘inconsistent’ special counsel report on Biden classified documents report

"Former Attorney General Eric Holder went after a recently released special counsel report on President Biden’s retention of classified documents Friday.

 

“Special Counsel Hur report on Biden classified documents issues contains way too many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with longstanding [Department of Justice] traditions,” Holder said Friday in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

 

Holder, who was attorney general in the Obama administration, said if the report had been “subject to a normal [Department of Justice] review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.”

 

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4458372-holder-biden-special-counsel-report/

 

Obama's wing-man? 

 

The same Attorney General Eric Holder the house voted to hold in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious? 

 

Yeah, he's not biased. 

[Negita43]

1 hour ago, Yellowtail said:

A report that let's Biden off the hook for committing the same crime Trump is being prosecuted for? 

 

Not quite - Biden told the archives he had them and cooperated. Trump hid them and didn't cooperate

[Amethyst]

Two posts with unsourced and unsubstantiated claims have been removed.

 

[impulse]

8 minutes ago, Negita43 said:

Not quite - Biden told the archives he had them and cooperated. Trump hid them and didn't cooperate

 

Biden knew he had classified documents in 2017 (and probably as early as 2009), and didn't turn them over until the heat was on in 2022.

 

Mr. Biden then continued to read nearly verbatim from portions of his notes on the 2014 Situation Room meeting.  Some of the portions that Mr. Biden read to Zwonitzer remains classified at the Secret level.

More generally, during his dozens of hours of interviews with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden read from notebook entries related to many classified meetings, including National Security Council meetings, CIA briefings. Department of Defense briefings, and other meetings and briefings with foreign policy officials.

 

Page 106 of the report.  You should really read the report.  It's pretty damning.

 

[Yellowtail]

2 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Biden knew he had classified documents in 2017 (and probably as early as 2009), and didn't turn them over until the heat was on in 2022.

 

Mr. Biden then continued to read nearly verbatim from portions of his notes on the 2014 Situation Room meeting.  Some of the portions that Mr. Biden read to Zwonitzer remains classified at the Secret level.

More generally, during his dozens of hours of interviews with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden read from notebook entries related to many classified meetings, including National Security Council meetings, CIA briefings. Department of Defense briefings, and other meetings and briefings with foreign policy officials.

 

Page 106 of the report.  You should really read the report.  It's pretty damning.

 

Not if you control the Justice Department, the FBI the CIA and the DC courts.  

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

If the legal issues pertaining to Biden's handling of classified or potentially classified materials were as clear-cut and pervasive as the Trumpists here claim, then Biden probably would have been charged.

 

But as the 388-page special counsel's report lays out in great detail, in each instance of the different types of documents involved and Biden's conduct involving them, there are issues of legal doubt about their status and questions about whether Biden's conduct was willful or unintentional.

 

In one example cited by the special counsel, Biden kept at his home handwritten notebooks of his time as vice president that contained some classified information, and he did so consciously, according to the special counsel's report. However, the special counsel noted that they probably could not prevail in a legal case on those materials because....

 

"During our interview of him, Mr. Biden was emphatic, declaring that his notebooks are "my property" and that "every president before me has done the exact same thing," that is, kept handwritten classified materials after leaving office. Ho also cited the diaries that President Reagan kept in his private home after leaving office, noting that they included classified information."

...

"During criminal litigation involving a former Reagan administration official in 1989 and 1990, the Department of Justice stated in public court filings that the "currently classified" diaries were Mr. Reagan's "personal records."

...

Most jurors would likely find evidence of this precedent and Mr. Biden's claimed reliance on it, which we expect would be admitted at trial, to be compelling evidence that Mr. Biden did not act willfully."

 

Page 9:
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf

 

So as I summarized above, in varying ways and circumstances on the various documents and Biden conduct involved, not a case that the special counsel felt they likely could prevail on in court, which is why they chose not to file charges.

 

 

[Hanaguma]

So, basically, we can encapsulate the report as follows: they both screwed the pooch. Trump out of hubris and arrogance, Biden out of senility and age.  

 

Can I be a Special Prosecutor now?

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

56 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Biden knew he had classified documents in 2017 (and probably as early as 2009), and didn't turn them over until the heat was on in 2022.

 

Mr. Biden then continued to read nearly verbatim from portions of his notes on the 2014 Situation Room meeting.  Some of the portions that Mr. Biden read to Zwonitzer remains classified at the Secret level.

More generally, during his dozens of hours of interviews with Zwonitzer, Mr. Biden read from notebook entries related to many classified meetings, including National Security Council meetings, CIA briefings. Department of Defense briefings, and other meetings and briefings with foreign policy officials.

 

Page 106 of the report.  You should really read the report.  It's pretty damning.

 

 

 

Not really:

 

First, the special counsel report notes that Biden was legally entitled to keep classified documents at his home during his years both as vice president and president (page 4). So then...

 

"The best case for charges would rely on Mr. Biden's possession of the Afghanistan documents in his Virginia home in February 2017. when he was a private citizen and when he told his ghostwriter he had just found classified material.

 

Several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges. For example, Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after. This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully.

...

Notably, the classified Afghanistan documents did not come up again in Mr. Biden's dozens of hours of recorded conversations with the ghostwriter, or in his book. And the place where the Afghanistan documents were eventually found in Mr. Biden's Delaware garage-in a badly damaged box surrounded by household detritus-suggests the documents might have been forgotten."

 

pages 4-5

https://www.justice.gov/storage/report-from-special-counsel-robert-k-hur-february-2024.pdf

 

 

[impulse]

12 minutes ago, Hanaguma said:

So, basically, we can encapsulate the report as follows: they both screwed the pooch. Trump out of hubris and arrogance, Biden out of senility and age.  

 

Can I be a Special Prosecutor now?

 

Or, Trump out of a genuine belief that, as President, he had the authority to declassify whatever he saw fit.  That's not hubris and arrogance.  Presidents throughout history have made claims and fought court cases to defend presidential powers.  Sometimes they prevail.  Sometimes they get overturned.  Rarely do they get prosecuted.  I'd say never, but that's a strong word.

 

 

[impulse]

4 minutes ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

Several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges. For example, Mr. Biden could have found the classified Afghanistan documents at his Virginia home in 2017 and then forgotten about them soon after. This could convince some reasonable jurors that he did not retain them willfully.

 

So he's either senile, or he's a criminal.  Or a senile criminal.  That's the gist of the entire report.

 

[Amethyst]

Several more unsourced and unsubstantiated claims have been removed.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

6 minutes ago, impulse said:

So he's either senile, or he's a criminal.  Or a senile criminal.  That's the gist of the entire report.

 

When a person has been in public service for decades and amassed large quantities of documents kept thru the years that were variously moved from place to place over time, potentially losing track of some of them is neither a sign of senility, nor is it criminal... as the special counsel obviously found in deciding that Biden would not face any charges.

 

 

Edited February 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

28 minutes ago, impulse said:

 

Or, Trump out of a genuine belief that, as President, he had the authority to declassify whatever he saw fit.  That's not hubris and arrogance.  Presidents throughout history have made claims and fought court cases to defend presidential powers.  Sometimes they prevail.  Sometimes they get overturned.  Rarely do they get prosecuted.  I'd say never, but that's a strong word.

 

 

 

Fact check: Seven of Trump’s false or unsupported claims on the documents investigation...

Unsupported claim: Trump declassified everything

"Facts First: Trump and his team have not provided any proof that Trump actually conducted some sort of broad declassification of the documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago – and, so far, his lawyers notably have not argued in their court filings that Trump did so. Eighteen former top Trump administration officials, including two former White House chiefs of staff who spoke on the record, told CNN in August that they never heard of a standing Trump declassification order when they were serving in the administration and that they now believe the claim is false....

...

It’s important to note that the laws under which the Justice Department said it was investigating possible crimes – statutes about the willful retention of national defense information, obstruction of a federal investigation, and the concealment or removal of government records – do not require documents to be classified for a crime to have been committed."

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/politics/fact-check-trump-claims-documents-investigation/index.html

 

 

Edited February 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[impulse]

1 minute ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

When a person has been in public service for decades and amassed large quantities of documents kept thru the years that were variously moved from place to place over time, potentially losing track of some of them is neither a sign of senility, nor is it criminal... as the special counsel obviously found in deciding that Biden would not face any charges.

 

The claim here was that Biden cooperated...  Yet, he knew about classified documents illegally in his possession in 2017, and didn't immediately turn them over.  In fact, not for another 5 years of sitting out in open boxes behind the old Corvette.  (there are photos...)  Where his ne'er do well son had access to them.

 

The report acknowledges that he broke laws.  But lamented that any jury would probably see him as an elderly man with a bad memory.  The kind of guy we want as head of the free world.  So he didn't recommend charges.  It'll be interesting to see what the next administration decides.

 

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

11 minutes ago, impulse said:

The report acknowledges that he broke laws.  But lamented that any jury would probably see him as an elderly man with a bad memory.

 

That's ONE reason cited by the special counsel, among many different reasons depending on the particular records, for not bringing charges against Biden, not the sole or primary reason by any means. It's just the reason the right-wing anti-Biden folks choose to fixate on.

 

Others (as sourced and explained in posts above) include: Biden cooperated with investigators and voluntarily returned the records when the issue arose, whereas Trump did none of that and fought tooth and nail to stymie and obstruct the investigation. Some of the materials Biden kept he'd have a good legal argument were his personal property (the handwritten notebooks). The circumstances of the handling of some of the records leave doubts that Biden's actions were willful, etc etc.

 

Edited February 10 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[uttradit]

9 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

If he had said the exact same thing about Trump, all those hypocrites would be lauding it to the heavens.

 

It must be a bad feeling knowing in your heart that Biden is not a suitable candidate  for POTUS, yet having to cover for him because there isn't anyone any better in your party that can win against Trump, and being so terrified of Trump winning that they have to cover for a geriatric that belongs in a retirement home, not the White House.

Yes well the Democrats are desperate. Telling lies about an 81yo.

[Yellowtail]

2 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

 

That's ONE reason cited by the special counsel, among many different reasons depending on the particular records, for not bringing charges against Biden, not the sole or primary reason by any means. It's just the reason the right-wing anti-Biden folks choose to fixate on.

 

Others (as sourced and explained in posts above) include: Biden cooperated with investigators and voluntarily returned the records when the issue arose, whereas Trump did none of that and fought tooth and nail to stymie and obstruct the investigation. Some of the materials Biden kept he'd have a good legal argument were his personal property (the handwritten notebooks). The circumstances of the handling of some of the records leave doubts that Biden's actions were willful, etc etc.

 

Only to the left

[GroveHillWanderer]

2 hours ago, impulse said:

Or, Trump out of a genuine belief that, as President, he had the authority to declassify whatever he saw fit.  That's not hubris and arrogance.  Presidents throughout history have made claims and fought court cases to defend presidential powers.  Sometimes they prevail.  Sometimes they get overturned.  Rarely do they get prosecuted.  I'd say never, but that's a strong word.

Trump may have thought he had the authority to declassify documents "just by thinking about it" (though I have my doubts about whether even he truly believed that) but his lawyers knew that he hadn't, and so were careful never to claim he had declassified the documents he held on to.

 

Attorneys for former president Donald Trump never claimed he declassified any documents that were retrieved from his Florida home

 

And in fact on one notorious occasion, even Trump himself made a point of specifically mentioning that the documents he was showing to people, were still classified.

[Yellowtail]

Just now, GroveHillWanderer said:

Trump may have thought he had the authority to declassify documents "just by thinking about it" (though I have my doubts about whether even he truly believed that) but his lawyers knew that he hadn't, and so were careful never to claim he had declassified the documents he held on to.

 

Attorneys for former president Donald Trump never claimed he declassified any documents that were retrieved from his Florida home

 

And in fact on one notorious occasion, even Trump himself made a point of specifically mentioning that the documents he was showing to people, were still classified.

Unlike Biden who never had the authority to declassify the documents he took and held onto for years.  

[Chomper Higgot]

4 hours ago, nauseus said:

 

So your comment and supposition (below) was both off-topic and therefore  irrelevant then:

 

If Biden were as bad as a bet for the 2024 election as Trump supporters would have us believe, they’d be keeping very quiet about it until Biden is locked in to the candidacy.

 

Oddly, they’ve been doing their best to get Democrats to change Biden out for another candidate.

 

No real surprise, I suppose.

 

 

No, it’s an observation that you clearly don’t feel comfortable with.

 

 

[Yellowtail]

It might be that the left is just pretending to "Rally Behind Biden". 

 

They get him to "decide" not to run in the next election, then they can have a primary to get rid of Kamala. 

 

I'm thinking Gavin Newsom.

[CG1 Blue]

12 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

If Biden were as bad as a bet for the 2024 election as Trump supporters would have us believe

Why do you think it's only Trump supporters who feel Biden is unfit to run for President?

The whole world can see he's not physically and mentally capable of doing another term, let alone run a campaign. Only the most blinkered Biden supporters are in denial of this. 

 

For the record, I don't think Trump is fit to be POTUS either, but I don't pretend Biden is ok just because I don't like Trump. I think that's what you're doing.