I've been clear that both Trump and Biden's mishandling of classified documents is equally wrong and concerning. If criminal liability for either could be proved under the "willfulness" standard then they should be prosecuted. I'm not excusing either.hokiewolf said:Manny, respectfully I disagree with your stance. Of the documents we know about that were in a locked storage container in his UPenn office, the classified documents were in a manilla envelope in a folder marked "personal". They have been missing for 6 years. And then only called the National Archives AFTER the mid-term election. We do not know yet what manner the classified documents found next to Biden's Corvette had been stored securely or not.Manny Sanguine said:If you have or know of a paper trail or witnesses showing that Biden knew about the contents of the boxes prior to the discovery of the classified documents, that would certainly be noteworthy. Nothing like that has been made public for Biden or Trump, so I'm skeptical.packgrad said:
Biden had classified info in multiple locations and Manny is hanging his hat on "he didn't know" defense. Lol. Poor fella.
Trump had classified documents scattered all over Mar-a-Lago, including in an unsecured desk in an office frequently open to guests. What's his defense?
So, having documents illegally stored for 6 years and then calling the National Archives saying hey, we found these documents is not a question of intent. You are excusing the concerning handling of secret documents because you think he did a better job of cooperating than Trump did.
Here's the analogy I'll make. If your predecessor was convicted of robbing banks, that doesn't mean that all crimes that have a punishment standard below robbing banks are all of a sudden legal.
I still maintain that there is a lot of information still not known that needs to see the light of day, but intent of either party is a distraction to the real issues here.
However, intent (i.e., willfulness) is a factor in the criminal statute. The difference is that so far there is little to no evidence for willfulness for Biden - just supposition. There is more evidence for Trump, as well as evidence applicable to other statutes, given the amount of notice he was given. It would be great if all of the underlying facts (who knew what when) would come to light, but that seems unlikely in either case. So, we're left making conclusions based on what happened after the point where we know that each was aware of the documents, because that's all we have (and probably all we'll ever have).
If people on the right want to prosecute Biden based on the current facts then they have to be willing to prosecute Trump, too.