The Biden Investigation Thread

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malchior
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The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

NY Times
Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Thursday appointed Robert K. Hur, a veteran prosecutor who worked in the Trump administration, to handle the investigation into how classified documents from President Biden’s time as vice president ended up at his private office and home.

Mr. Hur, who previously served as the U.S. attorney for Maryland during the Trump administration, is responsible for investigating “the possible unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or other records discovered” at the office of Mr. Biden’s think tank in Washington and his residence in Wilmington, Del., according to the order signed by Mr. Garland on Thursday.
Note: I expect someday this will be supplemented with idiotic GOP inquiries but we have our first formal President Biden one so why not get the party started?
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Jaymann
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by Jaymann »

Does this set a precedent for investigating a sitting President? I mean if you can't investigate a candidate...
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El Guapo
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by El Guapo »

What an f'ing disaster this is. Even if it's shown that any documents there were accidental and/or otherwise not a violation, I doubted that Garland would be willing to charge Trump based on the document stuff. With this looming, even if the issues are not at all the same, what are the odds that he'll be willing to charge him now? Zero?
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malchior
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

Jaymann wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:00 pm Does this set a precedent for investigating a sitting President? I mean if you can't investigate a candidate...
Mueller was investigating Trump during his Presidency. The DOJ position is you can't *prosecute* the President. In the end though this is manna from heaven for Garland. It takes much of the pressure off his plate to charge Trump. A lot of folks are PISSED at Garland right now. Essentially Trump was being chased for nearly 2 years over the classified documents and days after the Biden story breaks he is running out to appoint a Trump appointee special counsel. Strike 'no politics' off the DOJ bingo card with regard to Garland for all time. That ship has sailed.
El Guapo wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:03 pm What an f'ing disaster this is. Even if it's shown that any documents there were accidental and/or otherwise not a violation, I doubted that Garland would be willing to charge Trump based on the document stuff. With this looming, even if the issues are not at all the same, what are the odds that he'll be willing to charge him now? Zero?
It's a lot lower for sure. And it's not even an illegitimate problem. How can you prosecute Trump for this even with the gross differences in this environment? In any case, IMO we sort of knew Garland was probably going to do everything in his power to avoid charging Trump. It just seemed pretty obvious.

The right questions to ask are bigger now. What the heck are we in the middle of? It seems like we are in the middle of a historical political crisis and these are just the mini-crises within it. I don't think we'll be able to contextualize the shape, scope, extent, length, or outcomes of what is happening here right now in the United States. A crisis of governance and competence has completely overwhelmed us.

I'm pretty pissed off about this. Many of us who've been trained on classified material handling are agog at this spectacle right now. We're literally buried in training about proper safe guarding and the top leaders have it in their offices, obstruct the return of material in their private life, or in Biden's case have it in his goddamn garage. And the little people who mess up get thrown in a cell usually the day they're found out. But the leadership caste? It's all about intent and sensitivity and politics. It's a farce. We're clowns. We're idiots. Frankly we deserve better than these fools and jokers. Something has gone drastically wrong and we should be disgusted. But it's just another Thursday.
Last edited by malchior on Thu Jan 12, 2023 11:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

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Hodor.
malchior
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

That deserves way more than a Tweet or even a Tweet thread. He really needs to explain that take in significant depth. In fact, the idea that this shows balance is a bit of a farce considering how they tiptoed around the first issues for well over a year. In fact, we have significant reporting that Garland kvetched over the special counsel appointment of Trump for months itself.

Edit: Added a second earlier Tweet to contrast - is he is saying Garland is doing something unorthodox but it serves to help charge Trump? Maybe they are unconnected ideas (hard to say that being they are cohabitating this Tweet) but there is a big gap there.

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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by Octavious »

All Biden had to do was not do stupid shit. Like leaving documents in his garage... But here we are. I never thought Trump was going to get prosecuted for that, but he sure as shit won't now.
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malchior
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

LA Times
Merrick Garland’s appointment of special counsel Robert Hur to investigate the burgeoning Biden documents problem tells us something new about the attorney general.

Notwithstanding his image as a “just the facts and law” prosecutor, Garland, it appears, may factor into key high-profile decisions, political considerations and the importance of public confidence in the Justice Department’s evenhandedness.

No surprise, one might say. But until now, Garland has maintained and burnished a reputation as a wholeheartedly apolitical attorney general, indifferent to the consequences of his actions on the other branches and the public.

Indeed, even as he turned over to Jack Smith the oversight role in the Justice Department’s Trump investigations, Garland pointedly invoked the letter of the law, the “extraordinary circumstances” that required the appointment of a special counsel.

As the President Biden documents surfaced this week — a small number, including classified documents, found in two places — the near-unanimous assessment of commentators has been that Garland had “no choice” but to appoint a special counsel in the matter.

But that’s not what the law says. The Justice Department regulation calls for a special counsel to be appointed only “when the attorney general determines that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted” and that “the investigation … would present a conflict of interest for the department, or other extraordinary circumstances.”

The key determination, then, is that a criminal investigation is warranted. Based on what we know to date — and it’s possible the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation turned up facts related to the Biden documents that are as yet unreported — there’s simply no legal basis to conclude that a criminal investigation is warranted.

As we’ve learned again and again over the Trump years, the linchpin of most crimes, including document-based ones, is intent. Former President Trump is in document hot water, and deservedly, because the evidence suggests strongly that he knowingly and intentionally took government documents that should have been turned over to the National Archives, and then spearheaded multiple rounds of resistance and lying to the authorities that wanted them back.

By contrast, nothing we know suggests in the slightest that Biden acted intentionally in violation of the law. The record is bare of any indication that the president even knew the documents had left the White House.

Don’t get me wrong. The discovery of not one but two sets of government material in an office Biden used in Washington and at his Delaware residence certainly is cause for concern. It is most obviously a political headache that is now reaching migraine proportions. It also raises questions. How often do presidents and vice presidents leave office with classified documents? How are such documents accounted for, and how should those methods be tightened?

And the situation cries out for an investigation into how and why the documents weren’t handed over the archives when Biden left office as vice president.

But what it doesn’t cry out for is a criminal investigation. (One politically useful aspect of Hur’s appointment is the likelihood that he will determine that and put an end to the president’s problem.)
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waitingtoconnect
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by waitingtoconnect »

malchior wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:03 pm
Jaymann wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:00 pm Does this set a precedent for investigating a sitting President? I mean if you can't investigate a candidate...
Mueller was investigating Trump during his Presidency. The DOJ position is you can't *prosecute* the President. In the end though this is manna from heaven for Garland. It takes much of the pressure off his plate to charge Trump. A lot of folks are PISSED at Garland right now. Essentially Trump was being chased for nearly 2 years over the classified documents and days after the Biden story breaks he is running out to appoint a Trump appointee special counsel. Strike 'no politics' off the DOJ bingo card with regard to Garland for all time. That ship has sailed.
El Guapo wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 3:03 pm What an f'ing disaster this is. Even if it's shown that any documents there were accidental and/or otherwise not a violation, I doubted that Garland would be willing to charge Trump based on the document stuff. With this looming, even if the issues are not at all the same, what are the odds that he'll be willing to charge him now? Zero?
It's a lot lower for sure. And it's not even an illegitimate problem. How can you prosecute Trump for this even with the gross differences in this environment? In any case, IMO we sort of knew Garland was probably going to do everything in his power to avoid charging Trump. It just seemed pretty obvious.

The right questions to ask are bigger now. What the heck are we in the middle of? It seems like we are in the middle of a historical political crisis and these are just the mini-crises within it. I don't think we'll be able to contextualize the shape, scope, extent, length, or outcomes of what is happening here right now in the United States. A crisis of governance and competence has completely overwhelmed us.

I'm pretty pissed off about this. Many of us who've been trained on classified material handling are agog at this spectacle right now. We're literally buried in training about proper safe guarding and the top leaders have it in their offices, obstruct the return of material in their private life, or in Biden's case have it in his goddamn garage. And the little people who mess up get thrown in a cell usually the day they're found out. But the leadership caste? It's all about intent and sensitivity and politics. It's a farce. We're clowns. We're idiots. Frankly we deserve better than these fools and jokers. Something has gone drastically wrong and we should be disgusted. But it's just another Thursday.
If you walk out of any company or government department with confidential let alone any sort of secure document you are going to be hounded.

Given garland has jumped on this way faster than he did with anything trump has done it’s clear to me he’s going to prosecute Biden to show how tough he is on Democrats. And he will let trump slide.

Biden can’t run in 2024. we need fresh leadership.
malchior
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

waitingtoconnect wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:05 amIf you walk out of any company or government department with confidential let alone any sort of secure document you are going to be hounded.
Apparently not the "top top" people. They get a pass (relatively speaking) despite having access to the most sensitive data. Sounds right.
Given garland has jumped on this way faster than he did with anything trump has done it’s clear to me he’s going to prosecute Biden to show how tough he is on Democrats. And he will let trump slide.
I don't think there is any scenario where he charges Biden. He might charge Trump but it's always been pretty low. It's probably much lower now.
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

After reading some of the coverage, one thing I'm struggling with this afternoon is why did the Biden administration acknowledge the first batch of documents found without mentioning the second batch found in December in his garage? Did they think that wasn't going to come out? It makes them look like they are hiding something. Again I can't help but swing back to how we're suffering through multiple crises of competence.
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by hepcat »

Sadly, I have to agree.

I do think this is more incompetence than willful illegal behavior, which is how I view Trump's documents scandal.
waitingtoconnect wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 3:05 am Biden can’t run in 2024. we need fresh leadership.
I also have to agree with this. I wish it weren't so, but he's either getting played by folks on the opposite side of the aisle too much, or he's just getting in his own way. In either case, I finally have to admit it's time for a change of guard.
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malchior
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Re: The Biden Investigation Thread

Post by malchior »

Like I said - a crisis of incompetence. That includes the missteps that turned this into a long drawn out affair that keeps renewing itself in the media cycle.

NY Times
Investigators for the Department of Justice seized more than half a dozen additional documents, some of them classified, at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., on Friday after conducting a 13-hour search of the home, the president’s personal lawyer said Saturday evening.

Six documents with classified markings — including some from his time as a senator and others from his time as vice president — were taken by investigators, along with surrounding materials, according to the statement from Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s attorney.

Investigators also took “personally handwritten notes” by Mr. Biden from his time as vice president, Mr. Bauer wrote.

“Yesterday, D.O.J. completed a thorough search of all the materials in the president’s Wilmington home. It began at approximately 9:45 a.m. and concluded at around 10:30 p.m. and covered all working, living and storage spaces in the home,” Mr. Bauer said.
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