Posted on 01/17/2023 3:20:19 PM PST by dynachrome
Walter Shaub, ethics chief in the Obama administration, called out President Joe Biden on Tuesday for improperly retaining classified documents.
Biden, according to Shaub, demonstrated an "inexcusable neglect of the most basic security protocols." Still, Shaub downplayed the seriousness of Biden's actions by drawing a comparison to former President Donald Trump.
"It's nothing like Trump’s deliberate refusal to return classified records demanded by the National Archives," Shaub told Fox News, "but Biden’s own retention of classified records reflects an inexcusable neglect of the most basic security protocols."
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
They get on Biden’s case about the lack of protection of documents while Obama had a foreign enemy assassinated.
It is against US directive, foreign law, and presidential determination. Gerald Ford’s 1976 executive order on foreign intelligence activities (issued after the disclosure that the CIA had plans to do in Fidel Castro) explicitly prohibits government employees from engaging in “political assassination.” This certainly rules out killing heads of state through covert means. The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Terrorists, a congressional resolution that grants the president the right to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those who helped commit the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, arguably licenses the CIA to go after terrorists with impunity. It does not over rule the 1976 EO in that it does not define what is and is not with impunity. This means that they are not punished for doing something bad. In this case, the assassination of Bin Laden when he was unarmed, not actively combating the seal team, and holding on to a couple of his wives. Obama condoned this and made no effort to stop it or to punish the sortie team that did it.
The military lives in a world of rules called regulations and directives. It is what makes us the oiled machine we are and one of the best in the world at military actions. But they don’t include murder by assassination.
We didn’t assassinate Saddam Hussein who probably deserved execution the same as Bin Laden. But more was accomplished by his own people executing him than our killing him would have accomplished.
And now Obama’s people are hammering Biden for a security breech? Obama needs to go back to Indonesia and listen to the noise of Islam.
wy69
Official documents are required to be turned over so that the Archives have a record. I’m not sure that the warrant even referenced that. Trump is allowed to keep “personal materials”, which the presumption is that he gets to decide whether they are or are not, and if the Archives thinks they have the right to something they can go to court and ask the court to have that material turned over.
For example, Bill Clinton had tapes hidden in a sock drawer, which he didn’t turn over - asserting they were personal materials. There was a FOIA lawsuit over getting access to these as ‘government records’, and the courts ruled that Clinton got to determine whether or not they were personal records (without disclosing exactly what was on them).
Obama had taken millions of pages worth of records ‘for the Obama Presidential Center’ for digitization (which appears to not have happened yet). After *years*, and prodding from third-party lawsuits, the Archives worked with him and declared his storage facility as their facility, to preserve the fiction that they had control over the documents.
Gotta luv the word games and spin stuff those with power get away with. Too bad the rest of us can’t do some of that stuff.
Too bad we can’t get a straight up honest answer from everybody.
Obama had an ethics chief?
Loophole doctor Obama sent billions to Iran not all made it to this day nobody knows how billions got lost at the audit department.
Biden has already lost 20 billion
Let no federal payroll opening go unfilled!
He was Situational Ethics Chief.
No. Felonies.
Has anyone considered that the documents found are just all that is left of the many he may have had. How many could have been already removed by various visitors?
Or how do we know that the lawyers that were looking for the documents were honest about EVERYTHING they found. I think many were probably put away quietly somewhere. Didn’t O send boxes of “documents” to be stored for his library? Why has that not been talked about.
ethics
LOL
Well, he is right, it is nothing like President Trump’s issue.
IT IS WORSE.
Obama ethics chief…isn’t that an oxymoron? 🤔
No, it’s just another overpaid govt executive dept position.
Is that related to OJ’s efforts to find Nicole’s killer???
Obama’s REAL Legacy is on the jacket cover of his book & his “Birth Certificate”.
His job is to provide cover for Jugear's sorry arse. That's why he's speaking up now on this.
He should be calling out the same people from the Archives who claimed on three different occasions last year that Obama’s Presidential records “had been “securely moved” to locations that met “strict archival and security standards.” If they didn’t know there were Top Secret documents missing from 2017 when the Obama Administration left office, how could they possibly know that President Trump was in possession of classified documents after he left office in 2021?
Why is no one e mentioning that Obama and his ethics chief are complicit in this. Biden didn’t have the authority to de classify these documents. But they were supposed to be under Obamas control during his administration and they allowed Joe to walk with them.
In June 2022, Senior DOJ officials travel to Mar-a-Lago to meet with lawyers representing Trump regarding additional missing documents. If it was such a big deal, why did it take from February to June for the DOJ to meet with Trump's lawyers?
Early August, according to Fox News, a breakdown in negotiations between Trump and the DOJ allegedly occurred. They decided to obtain a search warrant, which was conducted on August 8th by the FBI. I don't see anything that says Trump refused to return anything. They were still supposed to be negotiating things, but the DOJ decided to play dirty politics and take criminal action. Yet, multiple Top Secret documents were missing from Obama's Presidential Records since 2017, that nobody from the National Archives gave a rat's ass about until they were uncovered starting just before the midterms.
I realize that you probably mean the press and the pundits, not other FReepers, but I pointed that out a few days ago and alluded to it in #36 on this thread.
Unlike Harry Truman, 0bongo’s motto was The Buck Stops At Every Desk Except Mine.
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