What is this thread all about?
Just a place for general discussion. A place to unload whats on your mind and talk about anything - personal, health, help needed, achievements, daily highs and daily lows, theories, predictions and what have you.
Does not need to be Q related.
I mean it's more up to us to wait through the next two years, right? Like, if he isn't actually President there's no way he'll be allowed a full four (if they decide to switch to Harris to counter the dementia narrative), much less to serve another four.
There are exceptions! None of those exceptions include "taking stuff without telling the proper people and following the proper procedure as mandated". I say mandated because I honestly think it's more of an executive branch thing than a legislative branch thing. Regardless, you wouldn't let Obama take home documents that belong to the government (since the title of President changes, the current President is essentially renting access to the government's property), and then claim it was okay that he didn't follow precedented procedure because he declassified the documents with his mind. Regardless of the classification, the papers are still all property of the government!
Which is why I believe your two points should be intertwined - this would be much less of an issue if it turns out Trump is still actually President, because he still is able to rent handling permissions. Not a zero issue, because storing classified documents in a location as insecure as Mar-A-Lago is iffy in and of itself (which is why I was surprised that Trump didn't run with "it was planted" as the first and only narrative).
Of course, if he has been the secret official President this whole time, he can't serve in 2025, can he? That would be clearly unconstitutional. I dunno, it's all a little murky.
So your contention is not about classification but about whose proeprty the papers are? So just in this little hypothetical situation, if Trump were to prove that he printed these documents on his personal printer, then it would be okay?
It's not either or - it's both classification and ownership. Since most documents a president has access to and creates as President don't belong to the President the human who will stop being President some day, they belong to the office.
In your hypothetical, if Trump printed out non-classified information on his own printer, that would be fine. He has not claimed that was what happened, and it wouldn't be believable if he suddenly started claiming it now. He has claimed that yes, he took documents, but it's okay because he declassified them by mental executive order. It'd be one thing if he had been consistent about a frame job from the beginning, but he instead immediately opened up a can of worms about executive privilege. Even if his longshot legal argument works, it would give all future administrations unprecedented ability to legally leak state secrets. So unless you're convinced there will never be an untrustworthy adminsitration again...
Of course, this is all assuming what we are seeing is what we will get, and that this isn't a longcon honey trap on the part of Trump.
This is very typical for Trump. He never plays his real defence in the media because it would be dumb to do so. Instead, he uses it as an opportunity to use marginally questionable defence that would raise eyebrows and gets coverage in MSM, while at the same time he will be able to judge certain aspects of that defence as a trial balloon.
So, regardless of what the reality is, one thing I am not going to put too much into is what Trump's defence was publicly - because we can be 100% sure its not going to be the real defence, and its part of the fun to watch.
As for the academic question we are honing towards is:
"Is there is any condition or situation under which a person who is an ex official of the government with a certain security clearance, can legally be in possession of such information in their secure possession"
Do you agree with this formulation of the question?
(And I use the word ex-official rather than ex-president, because I know that people like John Brennan etc, who still have security clearance, routinely acknowledge implicitly or explicitly accessing classified information in their role as experts on media - like with Hunter Biden's laptop. The question should encompass these people as well).
I'm sorry, your quoted question just doesn't make sense to me. Try rephrasing?
I'm not so sure that publicly stating a different defense than your actual legal defense is a good idea, especially if that actual legal defense contradicts what you publicly stated. Publicly stating that he intentionally removed these documents means there are several avenues that simply can't be walked down in court.
I'm curious as to what you think the defense will be if it's not executive privilege, and it's not that the docs were planted, and it's not a grand reveal Perry Mason moment.