If you get caught with classified material in your possession, you are prosecuted for a crime.
If some @sshole from CBS News, or CNN, or the New York Times broadcasts the same material over the airwaves or prints it in a newspaper, then it’s “protected speech” — because they're special, and you’re not.
No wonder the leftists who take over these institutions have no constraints when it comes to treating ordinary Americans as second-class citizens … because so many ordinary Americans are apparently just fine with it.
A private citizen can do the same.
Trump had a Constitutional right to the documents. As President, he has the Constitutional and lawful authority to declassified any documents he chooses to do so.
The Presidential Records Act is a civil matter; not a criminal. There is no evidence Trump ever denied the National Archives or the FBi the opportunity to come back and look at the documents.
The raid was just a show of force for political reasons. Not allowing Trump’s attorneys to observe the search is a Constitutional due process violation. How can the Government prove none of the documents weren’t planted?
The joke on us is that the "freedom of the press" does not create a "protected" class of people called "the press."
At the time of ratifying the Constitution, the "press" literally meant the device, the printing press. "Freedom of the press" was the right of the people to a free press; the right to publish; the right to own and operate a printing press.
The term "press" to refer to periodicals and newspapers didn't appear until the 1820s, and the use of "the press" to refer to reporters didn't begin until the 1920s.
Indictment for possessing classified documents should be the same for anyone who possesses them, journalists or not, for we are all citizen journalists.
-PJ