Home » Dershowitz on the Trump indictment

Comments

Dershowitz on the Trump indictment — 40 Comments

  1. I am appalled at the extreme stupidity/dishonesty of Andy McCarthy, John Hinderaker and anyone else who can’t see the obvious. The government illegally spied on Trump and everyone who ever knew him for 7 years. The illegal spying looked at everything he has ever done in his life.

    Everyone commits 3 felonies a day. That is, the government can prove enough to get a guilty verdict against anyone if they can spy on everything that person does.

    The story here is that Trump must be the most honest person in America since George Washington. That’s the only story that any credible observer can focus on. The forces of evil have told every lie, slithered out every slander, broken every law, shredded the constitution, and pursued the most abusive campaign of harassment and persecution in American history. And this is all they have managed.

    “Gee, the government (corrupt and evil as it is) might actually be able to put on some evidence that results in a conviction.” — has to be the most pathetic and worthless analysis possible.

    Anyone who treats the prosecution as if it is acting in good faith is a traitor to America. I’m serious. The story is the abuse of law. The story is the embodiment of evil that is the relentless campaign to get Trump.

    The story is Javert’s relentless, illegal, immoral crusade to destroy. Pretending he isn’t the essence of evil is to completely miss the whole point.

  2. stan:

    I’m not sure why that point of view would make you so angry.

    That’s what the “3 felonies a day” critique of federal law is all about. The government can probably convict anyone of something. And they might be able to do it for Trump. It doesn’t mean he’s guilty of anything important, and considering what he’s been through it’s amazing they haven’t been able to find more ways to get him. It is about the unfair way the law is often administered and used for nefarious purposes.

  3. I agree with stan. If a DC jury hears this case, Trump will have to appeal and that may delay a decision until the election. That, of course, is the purpose of the whole charade. Given the blatant corruption of this regime, I expect more indictments for non-crimes. The obvious comparison is Brazil where a corrupt judiciary and election fraud installed a corrupt Socialist and is now prosecuting Bolsonaro in a fashion that resembles this imbroglio.

  4. Probably worth saying it here, as elsewhere;

    Is the sheet of paper the “invade Iran” plan much talked about?
    We are supposed to have DoD plans for pretty much everything and you don’t need to spill classified beans for anybody with half a brain to know we have at least a planning outline for the invasion of Iran. So the existence of said plan cannot be “classified” in the sense of keeping people from knowing about it, since they already do, which is to presume the decades-long routine for contingency planning would necessarily include Iran

    Or did Trump flash some operational details, whose exposure could be taken seriously, since it would give the Iranians a hint of how best to oppose our invasion?

    Note to hysterics and liars. This is not a plan TO invade Iran. It’s a plan on how to do it if it becomes necessary. Big difference.

    Additionally; if called to sit on a federal trial, do you vote to acquit, no matter the case presented, as a moral and civic duty? Since trusting the feds would be silly to the point of deliberate immorality.

  5. I saw this show, back in august, it isn’t any more impressive now

  6. Question is where does trial get held? Seems Florida but the Department of Injustice knows they need raving Leftists to seal this weak case

  7. I’m with Stan a Mike K on this. The latter correctly opines “ Given the blatant corruption of this regime, I expect more indictments for non-crimes.” Me too.

    If our side, the right side, cannot coalesce in total and unanimous outrage at this unconstitutional abuse of not law, but mere legalisms, then stick fork in the Turkey nation. We’re done.

    And I’m on my way to a “Safe European home” (The Clash, from the album “Give ‘em Enough Rope” to hang them, every last one of ‘em).

    .

  8. ONE thing that I never hear American reports say is:

    Trump, + his ex-president’s houses, were…and forever will be…100% guarded by the US Secret Service.

    [I realize that the US Secret Service’s, guarding-things record is not 100% successful]- but- as a guarding unit and a police unit, they are as close to 100% successful as you can get.

    There is NO WAY that anyone would have seen these secret papers without [Trump’s permission plus the Secret Service’s permission].

    NO way.

    If someday I get the supreme, good luck, + make it 1] inside a Trump house, with no one seeing me, or 2] I make it inside The White House, with no one seeing me- I’ll be immediately grabbed + immobilized by 10 Secret Service guards who can fight better than 30 SUMO WRESTLERS, and I’ll be shoved prone on the floor by these guys, who will all sit on top of me, and who will shove a badge in front of my eyes + demand of me:

    “WHO THE H*LL ARE [you] SUPPOSED TO BE?”

    …and I’ll also hear phrases like: “What are [you] doing in here, little hot shot?

    Have you ever seen a 600 pound, fuming, angry, police dog before?”

    Trump’s houses, after he was President, never had the possibility of anyone getting [into] them, or seeing the government or ex-government papers inside them, unless the Secret Service had security-cleared that person(s)/anyone…up ONE side and down the other.

    Trump’s houses, + the papers inside them, have always been safer…and more heavily guarded: than the North Korean President’s- bedroom, or The NK President’s…secret-kitchen-full-of-candy-bars.

    What nonsense.

  9. If the two parties were even “somewhat equivalent, Hillary would have been indicted for the classified documents (some of which were TS-SCI) on her home email server some time in 2017.

  10. Intellectual cowardice is the only possible explanation for Dershowitz’s obtuse suggestion that both sides are somewhat equivalent in their politicization of the law.

  11. What I find puzzling (an understatement) is the persistent analysis by almost all of the legal experts (Andy McCarthy, Dershowitz, John Yoo) who continue to talk as though the legal norms that they have practiced all their lives are still applicable and that once these cases wend their way through the Supreme Court justice will prevail. We are, as the annoying Mark Levin rants, in a post-Constitutional nation.

  12. Sorry to have to say it, but on this point (so-called “equal” politicization by both sides) Dershowitz is delusional. Alas…
    (Though perhaps he believes that being “even-handed” is the ONLY way to BE HEARD by those who have pretty much rejected him outright already…for his stalwart defense of the Constitution and thereby, indirectly albeit, for “defending” Trump.)

    Haven’t yet checked what Turley might have to say, but if the past several months are any indication, he will be excoriating the “Biden” administration for weaponizing EVERYTHING, but particularly the DOJ and the rule of law, to kneecap political opponents—essentially making America’s TRANSFORMATION to a third-world dictatorship complete.
    (Brazil has already been mentioned above, most appropriately. The question, though, that could be asked is whether Lula is imitating “Biden” or vice-versa…?)
    – – – – – – – – – –
    ‘Is the…“invade Iran” plan much talked about?’
    Actually it is ONLY TALK (i.e., when it is talked about at all) in spite of those joint-USA/Israel maneuvers that one reads about.
    Janus-faced declarations, all of them.
    IOW, DO NOT BE FOOLED.
    The goal “Biden” is to ENSURE that Iran gets the bomb—FOR PEACEFUL PURPOSES ONLY, to be sure—but to do so in such a way as to make it APPEAR that “Biden” is against Iran getting the bomb (or, more precisely, doing it in such a ways as to make it APPEAR that Iran’s getting the bomb is a POSITIVE GOAL and that—IN ANY EVENT—“Biden” HAS ISRAEL’s BACK….so, hey, nothing to worry about…thus ANY Israeli worries about Iran are merely BIBI’s manipulative—and AGGRESSIVE, and POLITICAL—posturings….)
    There are STILL reasons why ‘Biden” must continue to stage this subterfuge; however, that such rationales will at some point—probably sooner than later—become UNNECESSARY, IOW IMPOSSIBLE—to sustain, even if “Biden” and “his” gaggle of disingenuous geniuses may try to do so….

    In fact, in spite of what appears to be already-planned US-Israel joint (and projected) maneuvers aimed at preventing Iranian aggression, it would be more than reasonable to assume that should Israel decide that it has no choice but to GO IT ALONE (that is, if Israel should conclude that it can NO LONGER wait, or expect, assistance FROM ANYONE on this score) that “Biden” will do “his” utmost to prevent such unilateral action…even to the extent of threatening to prevent it by ALL MEANS POSSIBLE, while casting Israel as the—potential—aggressor; which, if one recalls, was the post-Six-Day-War conclusion of certain Western countries (e.g., de Gaulle’s France as well as—no surprise—wide swaths of the Third-World bloc) AND A significant reason for Israel’s decision NOT to pre-empt the surprise joint Egyptian-Syrian attack in October 1973 (e.g., in order NOT to defy American warnings WRT pre-emption AND NOT to be cast as the aggressor).

    Should add here that the war in Ukraine is a most effective way of distracting and covering up what’s happening in Iran (along with all of “Biden”‘s other myriads of massive coverups and distractions).
    Interesting times…(?)
    + Bonus:
    From Tony Badran….
    “Team Biden Mainstreams Terror Financing in Lebanon;
    “Fifteen years of U.S. aid to ‘state security’ arms like the LAF and ISF have cost American taxpayers billions while harming Israel and strengthening Hezbollah”—
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/team-biden-mainstreams-terror-financing-lebanon

  13. OTOH, just read this article on Dershowitz:
    “Trump Indictment Fails Crucial Test: Dershowitz”
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/trump-indictment-fails-crucial-test-dershowitz
    Opening graf:
    ‘The federal indictment against former President Donald Trump fails a crucial test, law professor Alan Dershowitz says.
    “It doesn’t meet what I call the Richard Nixon standard, which was very clear obstruction of justice, destroying evidence, paying bribes,” Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said on Newsmax on June 9 after the indictment was unsealed….’ [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]

    So what is going on here, exactly?
    Might one conclude that some people—for whatever reason—feel it’s ALSO necessary to implicate Dershowitz…?

  14. Somewhat related (from the “Mistakes were Made…So Sorry” Files):
    “Top Biden Administration Official Admits To Lying To Congress”—
    (Yawn…)
    Opening grafs:
    ‘ A top official in President Joe Biden’s administration has admitted to lying to Congress when she claimed not to own individual stocks.
    ‘ Energy Secretary Jennifer Graholm, a Biden appointee, told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on April 20 that she did not own individual stocks, instead owning mutual funds.
    ‘ Granholm said in a letter on June 9 to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) that she was not truthful during the Capitol Hill appearance.
    ‘ “I mistakenly told the Committee that I did not own any individual stocks, whereas I should have said that I did not own any conflicting stocks,” Granholm wrote….’
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-biden-administration-official-admits-lying-congress
    Gosh! How do these things happen… (scratches head)…?
    No matter! Give her a raise! (And/or a gig on a major media network…)

  15. Lee Smith with some responses to “Biden” ‘s (by way of Jack Smith’s) performance art…FWIW:
    – Richard Grenell:
    “[Smith] is shaking as he speaks. He’s so nervous.
    “He has always overplayed his hand in the cases he’s handled because he’s an emotional partisan activist.
    “His Kosovo case is falling apart and his own witnesses there are now claiming he and his team at The Hague faked CIA officials to intimidate them.”—
    https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1667278451823484929?cxt=HHwWgoDR6eK6rqMuAAAA
    – “Trump Indictment: Democrat Corruption and Progressives’ One-Party State. Two Separate Operations Culminate in Charges Against Ex- POTUS/2024 GOP Frontrunner.”—
    https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/status/1667254893529255962?cxt=HHwWtMC-7b_fo6MuAAAA
    – Julie Kelly:
    “Beware of preening GOP politicians who, by their silence, have been complicit in the lead-up to today’s historic indictment. My piece from March 2021.”—
    https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2/status/1666984342252408834?cxt=HHwWhMC-4avbqKIuAAAA

    From: https://twitter.com/LeeSmithDC/

  16. And a rather astute article on the Nature of “THINGS” in the “Biden” administration:
    “Russiagate: The Scandal That Became Business As Usual”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/russiagate-scandal-became-business-usual
    Opening grafs:
    Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over. This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.
    “Rather it’s because Russiagate never ended…. [I]t is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity.
    A continuous thread connects the schemes to deny the results of the 2016 election, to cover up the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and the ongoing effort to tar President Biden’s opponents as extremists or racists.
    “Ironically, all of this is especially dangerous because it is out in the open….”
    [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]

  17. “I am appalled at the extreme stupidity/dishonesty of Andy McCarthy, John Hinderaker and anyone else who can’t see the obvious. The government illegally spied on Trump and everyone who ever knew him for 7 years. The illegal spying looked at everything he has ever done in his life.”

    The name to keep in mind here is Jay Bratt. He is the Assistant Special Counsel who signed the Indictment, as well as ran the MAL raid. He was the one who refused to allow Trump’s attorneys to produce documents on a rolling schedule, as is typical in this sort of case, and repeatedly dealt with them in bad faith. He is the reason that that one senior DOJ employee complained about the raid and the case violating DOJ. protocol, because of Bratt, the case was run from DOJ HQ, instead of the appropriate US Attorney.

    Because Bratt has another hat at the DOJ, and that is as the branch chief for the Counterintelligence and Export Section, of the National Security Division, of the DOJ. His branch, along with its sister organization in the FBI, the Counterintelligence Division, were the ones illegally spying on Trump, etc. His branch is the DOJ entity that approves most FISA warrant applications of US Persons, including the four on Carter Page. Reports of two special counsels and the DOJ IG Implicate both organizations in ongoing perfidy and illegalities. And the documents that the the DOJ and FBI knew that Trump had, prior to the MAL search, that were marked as classified, were the ones that Trump formally declassified his last day in office, that implicated and exposed said perfidy and illegalities by those two organizations.

    Yes – this criminal case against Trump is being run by the very same parts of the DOJ and FBI that have been trying to destroy him for nearing seven years now.

  18. exactly bruce, when the same people who have been shoveling the same illegal schemes tell us this is legit, we should look at them crosseyed,

  19. Bruce Hayden, thanks for that,
    Some background information on this particular Bratt.
    From Paul Sperry, August 18, 2022:
    “FBI Unit Leading Mar-a-Lago Probe Earlier Ran Discredited Trump-Russia Investigation”—
    https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/08/18/fbi_unit_leading_mar-a-lago_probe_previously_led_russiagate_hoax_848582.html

    In short he stinks to high heaven…along with the rest of the uber-corrupt, uber-dishonest, uber-compromised, uber-criminal “Biden” DOJ cadre..
    (Surprised?)
    + Bonus:
    “Report: Trump Prosecutor Jay Bratt’s Alleged Misconduct Causing a ‘Problem’ for DOJ”—
    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/06/08/report-trump-prosecutor-jay-bratts-alleged-misconduct-causing-a-problem-for-doj/

  20. Bratt, continued:
    From the “Bonus” (Breitbart) link, above:
    ‘An attorney who represents former President Donald Trump’s valet [Walt Nauta]..alleged in a letter that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutor handling the case engaged in misconduct that is reportedly “being viewed as a problem,” within the DOJ, according to The Guardian….
    ‘…Last November, DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt summoned Nauta’s attorney, Stanley Woodward, for a meeting at DOJ headquarters regarding “an urgent matter that they were reluctant to discuss over the phone,” The Guardian reported, relying on a letter filed under seal with the chief U.S. Judge in Washington, DC, James Boasberg.
    During that meeting, Bratt allegedly brought up Woodward’s application to be a superior court judge in Washington, DC, when trying to gain Nauta’s cooperation in the investigation. [Emphasis mine; Barry M.]
    ‘ The meeting between Bratt and Woodward occurred after Nauta had already spoken with prosecutors as part of their investigation into the former president….
    ‘…Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell spoke with multiple people inside the DOJ who told him, “This incident with Jay Bratt is widely known inside the National Security Division and is being viewed as a problem.”
    ‘ “Unclear whether it affects the Mar-a-Lago investigation but the chief judge in Washington has ordered briefings,” Lowell added….’

    Creme de la creme…of corruption.

  21. This is another argument in case we needed one that:
    ==
    1. The amount of verbiage in the federal penal code needs to be cut to a minimum.
    ==
    2. Federal grand juries should be replaced with adversarial preliminary hearings.
    ==
    3. Representation of the government as prosecutor and civil plaintiff should be in a different department from those housing the federal police services and custodial services.
    ==
    4. U.S. Attorneys and their counterparts in Washington should have no investigatory resources and no authority to initiate investigations. Their business is to represent the government in court, to evaluate the work product of the investigatory agencies, and to advise the investigatory agencies of the deficiencies in the case the lawyers are expected to present. They don’t act without (a) being assigned a case by HQ or (b) a referral from state and / or local agencies in their bailiwick or (c) a referral from the offices in their bailiwick of a federal investigatory agency. HQ does not act or assign cases to local US Attorneys without (a) a referral from the HQ of a federal investigatory agency or (b) a referral from Congress or (c) a referral from a committee of Congress or (d) a referral from the President.
    ==
    5. No one is employed as an attorney in a US Attorney’s office or their counterparts in Washington for more than 12 years in any bloc of 14 and no one holds the position of U.S. Attorney, Assistant Attorney-General, or Attorney-General for more than four years in any bloc of six.
    ==
    6. We must erect institutional mechanisms to severely sanction errant prosecutors and judges and end their impunity.
    ==
    7. The policing services of the federal government need to be scattered across six separate departments and include among them no omnibus agencies. Every bureau must have a discrete book of business. Every bureau must be run by a career cop, not a lawyer.
    ==
    8. The federal penal code needs to be recomposed to inhibit if not eliminate charge-stacking.
    ==
    9. When a nominated crime is stated as having degrees, each lower degree should be defined to be a lesser included offense of a higher degree, and juries as well as judges as triers of fact should always have the option of convicting on a lesser included offense. Some nominated crimes should also be defined as lesser included offenses of other nominated crimes.
    ==
    10. Sentencing formulae for every crime in the penal code should be specified in the statute and judges should be allowed no discretion above and beyond whether or not to accept a plea agreement (which will incorporate a sentencing formula). For sentencing formulae which include facts of the case as argument, the formal determination of the facts should be via a panel consisting of a judge and two assessors. The assessors should be from professions other than law and drawn at random from rolls of apposite professionals working in the jurisdiction in question. Prosecutors at trial should be compelled to disclose to the jury plea offers made to the defendant before the case went to trial.
    ==
    11. It must be made explicit in the statute that selective prosecution renders provisions of the penal code null and void absent congressional action, and, being null and void, is grounds to quash a charge or conviction every time. “Equal protection” should mean just that. We live in a vicious regime where it does not carry its plain meaning but is posited to carry a dozen other meanings dreamt up by judges and law professors.
    ==
    12. The sentencing formulae in the federal penal code must be calibrated to generate periods of incarceration which reflect the median of what one might expect if one was prosecuted for an analogous offense by a state prosecutor.
    ==
    13. Prosecuting someone in federal court with factual material derived from a failed state prosecution should be regarded as double-jeopardy by default
    ==
    14. The state being the primary repository of order maintenance functions, federal prosecutions should always take a back seat to state prosecutions.
    ==
    15. Defendants in federal cases should be due an indemnity for legal expenses incurred. The indemnity should be calculated thus: (1-(c/b)) x h x s, where ‘h’ is the number of billable hours an attorney can document, ‘s’ is a standard rate for federal legal services adjusted each year, ‘b’ is the expected term of imprisonment for the charges on the bill of particulars, and ‘c’ is the expected term of imprisonment for the charges of which the defendant is convicted. These indemnities will come out of the budget of the prosecutor’s office and be paid to counsel.

  22. Cross-posted from the “Trump indictment” thread, on the Clinton sock drawer case:

    cb, that’s an excellent reference. I had forgotten about those Clinton tapes, and the court decision, which went unchallenged, is definitive: A president has the right to take what documents he wants without restriction.

    The only thing that might stick, in a fair trial, then, is the question of whether Trump actually allowed people without security clearances to review top secret documents. Waving papers in the air doesn’t seem to meet that test. They may not even be able to prove that Trump had the actual document to wave at them at the time; he may have been waving around random pieces of paper to make his point.

    The case has been filed in Florida, so a rational jury is at least possible.

  23. Re Geoffrey Britain’s Yama’s frustration that pundits ignore our OBVIOUS post-Constitutional times, Instapundit has a new, brief except from Roger Kimbal on this. Pundit artistry to use Elon Musk as his launch pad:

    “ROGER KIMBALL: Can Trump Clean The Augean Stables on the Potomac?:

    The indictment against Trump was formally brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith. But the [Wall Street] Journal is right. Smith is just an errand boy. “Americans will inevitably see this as a Garland-Biden indictment,” they noted, “and they are right to think so.”

    Indeed. Elon Musk, no fan of Trump’s, put his finger on an essential element in this saga: “There does seem,” he wrote on June 8, responding to the indictment, “to be far higher interest in pursuing Trump compared to other people in politics.”

    How’s that for understatement? Almost as good, I’d say, as his deployment of the future tense in his follow-up sentence: “Very important that the justice system rebut what appears to be differential enforcement or they will lose public trust.”

    That ship has sailed, I regret to say. Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is as corrupt as Hunter Biden’s laptop. Few people of either party trust it, nor should they. What we need now is a bold new Hercules who can cleanse the Augean stables on the Potomac. It seems unlikely, I know, and perhaps supremely ironical, but the name of that cleansing hero may just be Donald J. Trump.“
    _____

    WOW. I dare say nearly no one here will gainsay that final paragraph. Unless it is that final line.

  24. except monaco (russia hoax promoter) and kristen clarke, (cop killer afficionado) probably wagged the tail

  25. Yara,
    “who continue to talk as though the legal norms that they have practiced all their lives are still applicable”

    This. There is no good faith here. And anyone saying there is, or whose analysis takes it as a given, is lying. Andy McCarthy is a liar. As is Hinderaker. Because this is the lynchpin moment for the nation. If a legal pundit cannot get this right, they can’t get anything worthwhile right.

  26. yara; stan:

    I don’t think that Dershowitz indicates he thinks the legal norms of yesteryear apply to the Trump prosecutions. Is there some place where he says that?

    McCarthy does often write that way, but I haven’t noticed it with Dershowitz lately.

    Also, the current Trump case will be tried in Florida, which at least has a different jury pool than DC. I don’t know whether it will matter, though.

  27. There is some concern about whether the boxes in the bathroom and ballroom are really secret documents or just memorabilia. And concern about the transcription and editing of the conversation. Something can be “a secret” that I don’t want to talk about and not be marked “Secret” by the government. For that matter, documents are still marked “Secret” or “Confidential” even after they have been declassified. They may have been declassified by the agencies in question, rather than the president (who also has the right to declassify them). As noted above, there are probably scores or hundreds of documents in existence that talk about war with Iraq but aren’t the actual operational plans for an invasion.

    Tone of voice and body language are also relevant. When Trump expresses admiration for the fixer who got Hillary Clinton out of the email scandal (I think by destroying the email and servers), is that really to be taken at face value? In everyday experience, haven’t people often expressed “admiration” for someone who gets away with something, without expressing actual approval of their conduct? This is yet another indication that if one wants to speak freely, one shouldn’t record the conversation.

  28. Abraxas:

    Agreed. But will a judge or jury see it that way? And also perhaps there may be a witness willing to testify against Trump either because he’s a Trump enemy or because he’s been threatened with prosecution himself unless he testifies to what the prosecutors want.

  29. Read a few articles from people who have way more knowledge of law than me that this is a big stretch of law and just forgetting there are other laws that give President Trump the right to have said documents. They want to make like he was about to sell them to Russia or something but they were all safe and secure where they were.
    No one yet has brought up Barky and the unsecured warehouse he has stored millions of pages. No one ever will look into what he has or has destroyed to cover his own butt.

  30. Once upon a time, was custodian of classified documents at my last duty station. One of my part time jobs.
    Here’s what happens when the classified warning about be wary of Greeks bearing gifts which look like horses becomes irrelevant. Might be declassified except we don’t want anybody know how we knew.
    So it hangs on.
    If somebody looking for ways to kill time and working in the relevant office decides to declassify it–no particular reason to bother but maybe–manages to declassify it, what happens next?
    Nobody tells me, or if they do, I didn’t notice.
    But if they do, here are two things which don’t happen: The face page saying “SECRET” does not destaple itself from the document and skitter off to the shredder.
    And the red warnings stamped on the first page, or on each page, do not bleach themselves. And the documents do not automatically auto-shred.
    And I, as custodian, have better things to do than shuffle between the documents looking for what not to worry about any longer, this time about Greeks and horses or something.

    So….footage of boxes in Trump’s residence mean…nothing.
    And the lack of footage of boxes in Biden’s various locations must mean something.

  31. When I was on the space program, we produced a lot of classified computer output dealing with classified space missions. Mostly it was on 132 column green bar fan fold paper. Each page was stamped SECRET top and bottom and the page number top and bottom. We had a special page numbering stamp that stamped twice before incrementing the page number. It was self-inking. The SECRET stamp wasn’t. To declassify, each SECRET label was blacked out with a magic marker. Some of these listings might be six or seven inches thick. There could be a considerable delay in releasing these to their owners due to all that stamping. I eventually hacked the OS and the format unit on the high-speed band printer to trick it into printing in the blank lines between pages. The operations staff was quite grateful to not have to hand stamp them anymore.

  32. Dershowitz (again)…
    …says it’s a case of “Get Trump”—though the one potentially damning piece of evidence is the recording:
    “Alan Dershowitz slams Trump indictment, shares one ‘damning piece of evidence’ in DOJ’s case”—
    https://www.foxnews.com/media/alan-dershowitz-slams-trump-indictment-shares-one-damning-piece-evidence-doj-case
    Opening graf:
    ‘Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz offered his legal insight into the indictment of former President Donald Trump, saying Special Counsel Jack Smith had only one job when he was assigned to the case: “Get Trump.”…’

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>