Posted on 06/20/2023 8:02:39 AM PDT by ChicagoConservative27
Fox News analyst Brit Hume said Monday that former President Trump’s defense for keeping classified documents was borderline “incoherent.”
“His answers on the matter of the law seem to verge on incoherent,” Hume said after a portion of Trump’s interview with Fox anchor Bret Baier aired on the network.
“He seemed to be saying the documents were really his and he didn’t give them back when he was requested to do so, and when they were subpoenaed because he wasn’t ready to because he hadn’t sorted them or whatever from his golf shirts,” Hume said. “It was not altogether clear what he was saying, but he seemed to believe that the documents were his, that he had declassified them and therefore he could do whatever he wanted with them.”
Hume cast doubt on the idea that Trump’s explanation would hold up in court.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
“Long before Wikileaks and social media, the journalist Drew Pearson exposed to public view information that public officials tried to keep hidden. A self-professed “keyhole peeper”, Pearson devoted himself to revealing what politicians were doing behind closed doors. From 1932 to 1969, his daily “Washington Merry-Go-Round” column and weekly radio and TV commentary broke secrets, revealed classified information, and passed along rumors based on sources high and low in the federal government, while intelligence agents searched fruitlessly for his sources.”
“Breaking secrets was the heartbeat of Pearson’s column. His ability to reveal classified information, even during wartime, motivated foreign and domestic intelligence agents to pursue him. He played cat and mouse with the investigators who shadowed him, tapped his phone, read his mail, and planted agents among his friends. Yet they rarely learned his sources. The FBI found it so fruitless to track down leaks to the columnist that it advised agencies to simply do a better job of keeping their files secret. Drawing on Pearson’s extensive correspondence, diaries, and oral histories, The Columnist reveals the mystery behind Pearson’s leaks and the accuracy of his most controversial revelations.”
https://www.amazon.com/Columnist-Leaks-Libel-Pearsons-Washington/dp/0190067586
Classified or declassified does not matter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It does matter.
That might be a valid point if Trump was in fact charged with holding just presidential records.
But he is facing 37 charges of CLASSIFIED documents.
The burden is on the prosecution to prove they were classified.
The Presidential Records Act does not justify Trump taking records that were not personal, regardless of the classification. The only way the PRA can help Trump is that it is a civil statute, which allows Trump to argue that criminal charges are not appropriate to resolve the dispute. It does not say that the departing president can designate anything as personal and there is no recourse. In the Clinton case, the court’s position was that NARA declined to try to recover the tapes from Clinton and there was nothing in the statute that allowed the court to force them to do so, so the case was dismissed.
And Britt knows a thing or two about “incoherent”.
I think the documentation and money trail has the bribes at $30 million.....and more bank records may be obtained....yep....it’s gonna be a l-o-n-g summer!!
Hume’s soul is incoherent.
“But he is facing 37 charges of CLASSIFIED documents.”
Actually, no he is not. If you read the indictment on those 31 charges, nothing is mentioned about classification. He is charged with keeping national defense information and refusing to return it. It looks like they deliberately avoided the classification issues in the actual charges, avoiding the need to establish whether or not Trump declassified them. All they have to prove is that the documents contained national defense information, regardless of how they were classified. The remaining 6 charges deal with obstruction, conspiracy and false statements, none of which rely on the classification of the documents. Even the subpoena was written to obviate the claim that Trump declassified the documents and thus didn’t need to return them. The subpoena was for all documents containing classification marks, regardless of whether they were still classified or not.
more things that require secrecy:
14. stealth aircraft detection means
15. stealth aircraft operating technique
16. industrial counterespionage
17. false information feeds
Well if Brit says so.....
“NARA refusing to take Trump documents + picture”
Wow! Why hasn’t that been publicized before? Could there be more to the story?
Brit Hume never was very good at analyzing any of the stories he covers he has the shot gun effect on fact finding he works at FOX for a reason.
Thanks for this info. It got me to looking at more details.
How is the Presidential Records Act enforced?
The Presidential Records Act includes no enforcement mechanism, and a former president has never been punished for violating the law. But other federal statutes impose penalties for illegally retaining or distributing national defense information.
Prosecutors are not relying on the PRA to bring charges against Trump. He is instead charged with retaining national defense information under a different law known as the Espionage Act, a 1917 statute that has been used to prosecute other high-profile cases related to the retention or dissemination of classified information.
more.....
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-presidential-records-act-indictment-arraignment/
Corrupt paid propagandaist treasonous asshole in need of consequences for his treachery just like all the rest of his peers and handlers.
Hume is a Bush Republican who has always disparaged President Trump. He’s Fox News hit man with a calm demeanor.
I’m a bigly Trump supporter but Hume is right. Donald needs to shut up. He is giving them the rope to hang himself. Feds are very good at twisting your words to use against you and it can be very effective.
It is hard to make a point with the weasel Baier interrupting and not allowing him to complete his narrative.
I understand it this way:
1) There are the classified documents that Trump knew was classified and kept in a safe. He didn’t return those because he had declassified them.
2) There are all the other boxes of documents, many of which Trump or a designated staffer didn’t get around to going through that might contain documents the National Archives wanted and documents that were still classified or had classified markings on them.
It does make sense but it can be made to appear “incoherent.” I don’t suppose Trump’s experience with presidential documents — classified and unclassified — is that different from other presidents, vice presidents, top politicians and top bureaucrats, but it’s being made to look particularly chaotic and careless and the public, and possibly the jury, are going to be pushed to that conclusion.
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