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There are also many differences, as well as other issues where we lack sufficient information to know what’s similar and different: There were purportedly 10 documents with classified markings at the Penn Biden Center and a “small number” at Biden’s Wilmington residence; over 300 were at Mar-a-Lago. Some of the Mar-a-Lago documents were reportedly very sensitive, involving intelligence about Iran and China. Some of the Biden Center documents were intelligence briefing materials about politically sensitive countries like Iran and Ukraine. Biden’s team claims to have returned the documents as soon as they discovered them, volunteering them to the National Archives without being asked. Trump, when asked by the Archives to return missing documents, gave back some but fought hard against returning others, including reportedly ordering some boxes moved to hide them from visiting government officials. Trump insisted the classified documents be kept at Mar-a-Lago. Biden’s level of involvement in keeping the documents is unclear, but they were reportedly found among other personal documents of his. Investigators believe Trump’s motive in retaining the documents was his “ego,” while it’s still unclear how the Biden Center documents got there. Prosecutors will weigh all these topics in determining whether to bring charges. But the politics will be tough to avoid, too. There were already internal skeptics of the Trump case before the Biden news broke, and they were already going to have powerful subpoena-equipped allies in the GOP-led House of Representatives. Now they will surely be more active in criticizing any perceived double standard — and Garland and Smith may well think even harder before charging Trump.
Additionally, AG Garland appointed the special counsel, Robert Hur, who was appointed by the former administration and not by the Biden administration. That removed any possibility of conflict of interest.
"After news broke yesterday that President Joe Biden’s lawyers had found a second batch of documents in his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Attorney General Merrick Garland today appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents. After law school, Hur clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and then served as special assistant to Christopher Wray—then an assistant attorney general, now FBI director—before being appointed by former president Trump as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Since he left office in February 2021, he has been in private practice.
Accepting the post, Hur said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”"
This won’t go down easy. Likely to help Trump defuse / mitigate his transgressions in the public eye, even though very different from a legal perspective. Dug-up a scholarly work which examines the tendency of people to lump into one category basically dissimilar transgressions of law.
(Excerpts)
- ”The field of comparative law prioritizes the ascertainment of universals or commonalities across laws, … In the process, comparative research abides significant distortion of information, not always in good faith, and a correlative loss of intellectual warrant …
- ‘The worlds in which we live are different to the point of the monstrosity of the unrecognizable, of the un-similar, of the unbelievable, of the non-similar, of the non-resembling or resemblable, of the non-assimilable, of the untransferable’. – Jacques Derrida
- ‘Without acknowledging differences, comparison is partisanship, and not always in a good cause’. – Samuel Moyn
- ‘It is the strongest censorship, this search for non-difference’. – Jean Bollack
- Whether making strange law familiar or, even more audaciously, rendering familiar law strange, comparative law demands spontaneous attunement to differences across laws – or so one would readily expect. But comparatists are enthralled to universals, equivalences, and commonalities, often disingenuously so.”
For future government employees, including those working as or for xxTUS, I hope a lesson is being learned. I find the two cases to be different but, still, they both are also stupid (and I hate stupid in people who should be more). I remember how meticulously I had to go through and separate the stuff in my office when I left the DOD. With all the helpers available, the members of xxTUS should be expected to do the same.
For future government employees, including those working as or for xxTUS, I hope a lesson is being learned. I find the two cases to be different but, still, they both are also stupid (and I hate stupid in people who should be more). I remember how meticulously I had to go through and separate the stuff in my office when I left the DOD. With all the helpers available, the members of xxTUS should be expected to do the same.
Yup - Thanks @Anna for the relevant example. (I hate “stupid” in people too.)
In Biden’s case it could point to the extremely high number of classified documents that exist and the difficulty keeping track & securing all of them. Obviously they need to be viewed, read, digested by top officials - yet perhaps have become overly prolific in number. But Joe’s got his “ *** in the wringer” here for sure.
Trump on the other hand purposely accumulated all he could and stonewalled attempts to retrieve them. But again, perhaps the sheer number of such documents in existence gave him the ***s to think he could get away with it.
Maybe overlooked in all the media coverage is the fact these things exist in paper form at all in this day and age … Well, you’ve given me a good excuse to pull up a good James Bond flick.
For future government employees, including those working as or for xxTUS, I hope a lesson is being learned. I find the two cases to be different but, still, they both are also stupid (and I hate stupid in people who should be more). I remember how meticulously I had to go through and separate the stuff in my office when I left the DOD. With all the helpers available, the members of xxTUS should be expected to do the same.
Quite right: Joe was careless, but is cooperating. The Orange Bag of Farts denied, dissembled, lied and made false claims. And he has stonewalled at every step. Which makes him an even bigger criminal scumbag than he was before. WHEN will he end up behind bars, where he belongs!!!????
Comments
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/12/white-house-confirms-more-classified-files-found-at-biden-home
Additionally, AG Garland appointed the special counsel, Robert Hur, who was appointed by the former administration and not by the Biden administration. That removed any possibility of conflict of interest.
"After news broke yesterday that President Joe Biden’s lawyers had found a second batch of documents in his home in Wilmington, Delaware, Attorney General Merrick Garland today appointed Robert Hur as special counsel to investigate Biden’s handling of classified documents. After law school, Hur clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist and then served as special assistant to Christopher Wray—then an assistant attorney general, now FBI director—before being appointed by former president Trump as the U.S. attorney in Maryland. Since he left office in February 2021, he has been in private practice.
Accepting the post, Hur said: “I will conduct the assigned investigation with fair, impartial, and dispassionate judgment. I intend to follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor, and will honor the trust placed in me to perform this service.”"
(Excerpts)
- ”The field of comparative law prioritizes the ascertainment of universals or commonalities across laws, … In the process, comparative research abides significant distortion of information, not always in good faith, and a correlative loss of intellectual warrant …
- ‘The worlds in which we live are different to the point of the monstrosity of the unrecognizable, of the un-similar, of the unbelievable, of the non-similar, of the non-resembling or resemblable, of the non-assimilable, of the untransferable’. – Jacques Derrida
- ‘Without acknowledging differences, comparison is partisanship, and not always in a good cause’. – Samuel Moyn
- ‘It is the strongest censorship, this search for non-difference’. – Jean Bollack
- Whether making strange law familiar or, even more audaciously, rendering familiar law strange, comparative law demands spontaneous attunement to differences across laws – or so one would readily expect. But comparatists are enthralled to universals, equivalences, and commonalities, often disingenuously so.”
The Guile and The Guise: Apropos of Comparative Law as We Know It
Go into your dance …
“Give 'em the old three ring circus
Stun and stagger 'em
Though you are stiffer than a girder
They let you get away with murder”
- From “Chicago”
In Biden’s case it could point to the extremely high number of classified documents that exist and the difficulty keeping track & securing all of them. Obviously they need to be viewed, read, digested by top officials - yet perhaps have become overly prolific in number. But Joe’s got his “ *** in the wringer” here for sure.
Trump on the other hand purposely accumulated all he could and stonewalled attempts to retrieve them. But again, perhaps the sheer number of such documents in existence gave him the ***s to think he could get away with it.
Maybe overlooked in all the media coverage is the fact these things exist in paper form at all in this day and age … Well, you’ve given me a good excuse to pull up a good James Bond flick.