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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

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bob
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#26

Post by bob »

Speaking of sweet spherical fruits, AP has a good apples-to-oranges explainer.

Of particular note, unless policy has somehow changed, the DOJ believes Biden is immune until at least January 2025.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#27

Post by Dr. Ken »

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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#28

Post by noblepa »

I read that the "investigation" had been assigned to a Trump-appointed US Attorney in Chicago. I put the quotes because, the article I read said that it was a review and not a full-fledged investigation.

Is Mr. Hur that US Attorney, or is this something else?
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#29

Post by Dr. Ken »

noblepa wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:49 pm I read that the "investigation" had been assigned to a Trump-appointed US Attorney in Chicago. I put the quotes because, the article I read said that it was a review and not a full-fledged investigation.

Is Mr. Hur that US Attorney, or is this something else?
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#30

Post by jemcanada2 »

bob wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 10:19 am
jemcanada2 wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 8:03 am It also bothers me that one of the new talking points is that tfg could declassify documents (with his mind :brickwallsmall: ) because he was president, but Biden couldn’t because he was vice president at the time.
Fortunately for Biden, then-President Obama did mind declassify them. :banana:

Too also: President Biden mind declassified them and mind pardoned himself. :banana: :banana:
:banana: :banana:

Dark Brandon for the win! 8-) 8-)
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#31

Post by bob »

Dr. Ken wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:54 pm Former US Attorney for Marlyand having served from 2018-Feb 2021
He's now a Gibson Dunn partner. He was in private practice before his government service, presumably there as well.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#32

Post by raison de arizona »

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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#33

Post by Greatgrey »

Yeah, Palmer Report & Marge, I dunno but something that makes for fun speculation.



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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#34

Post by Kriselda Gray »

bob wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:24 pm Of particular note, unless policy has somehow changed, the DOJ believes Biden is immune until at least January 2025.
Where does that come from? I haven't seen it, and couldn't find a reference to it in the linked article...
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#35

Post by Suranis »

Kriselda Gray wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 10:27 am
bob wrote: Thu Jan 12, 2023 1:24 pm Of particular note, unless policy has somehow changed, the DOJ believes Biden is immune until at least January 2025.
Where does that come from? I haven't seen it, and couldn't find a reference to it in the linked article...
Bob Barr, Mueller, and the Case of the Amazing Presidential Immunity.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#36

Post by W. Kevin Vicklund »

See also too the Mueller Report

eta :Ninja'd
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#37

Post by Kriselda Gray »

Oh - not something specifically related to just the document thing (which is what I thought he meant) but related to his being President now thing. Got it. Thanks!
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#38

Post by RTH10260 »

:twisted: of course Biden can reference the former guy and look in the NARA documents for the paper where the now senior citizen asked about pardoning himself :silenced:
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#39

Post by Foggy »

President Trump is making the same bonehead mistake as Governor Lake in Arizona:

You gotta walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

In this case ... :toxic-waste: TOP SEKRIT, DO NOT READ! :toxic-waste:
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Out from under. :thumbsup:
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Biden's misplaced classified docs

#40

Post by jemcanada2 »

Foggy wrote: Fri Jan 13, 2023 12:07 pm Trump is making the same bonehead mistake as Governor Lake in Arizona:

You gotta walk the walk and not just talk the talk.

In this case ... :toxic-waste: TOP SEKRIT, DO NOT READ! :toxic-waste:
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#41

Post by Kendra »


So let me get this straight. Everyone who was mad at Garland for appointing Jack Smith (“He’s too weak to do it himself. He punted. This isn’t necessary”) is now angry with him for not doing it sooner?
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#42

Post by p0rtia »

I really like Allison (Mueller She Wrote) most of the time, but man has she gone unhinged over those of her followers who feel that Garland is daily failing this country, not least because he started so slowly.

As with the post above, she is being dishonest and is using put-downs to her followers rather than discussion/respecting other opinions. Which is one of the things she accuses those who disagree with her of doing.

Makes me sad.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#43

Post by raison de arizona »

CHAIR JORDAN: House Judiciary Committee Launches Investigation Into Biden's Mishandled Docs

Jim Jordan has launched his first investigation.

According to a Fox News report, House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has announced his committee will examine President Biden’s “mishandling” of classified documents and the Justice Department’s investigation.

From Fox News:
The investigation led by Jordan, R-Ohio, comes one day after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to examine the matter, former U.S. attorney Robert Hur. The Justice Department escalated it to a special counsel investigation from a mere review Thursday after a second stash of classified documents was found inside the garage of Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home. The first documents were found inside the Washington offices of the Penn Biden Center think tank.
“We are conducting oversight of the Justice Department’s actions with respect to former Vice President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, including the apparently unauthorized possession of classified material at a Washington, D.C. private office and in the garage of his Wilmington, Delaware residence,” Jordan and Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., wrote in a letter sent Friday to Garland.
:snippity:
https://hannity.com/media-room/chair-jo ... dled-docs/
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#44

Post by Suranis »

Interesting Snopes article talking about whether Biden had the power to declassify documents as VP. Answer - Yes.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/biden-documents/
Federal law does not give U.S. vice presidents authority to declassify government documents.
Rating:
False
False

About this rating

Context

Under an Obama-era executive order, vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify documents — just like presidents. In January 2023, after news broke that federal documents pertaining to U.S. President Joe Biden's tenure as vice president were uncovered at his former office and Delaware home, critics pushed the erroneous notion that he didn't have the authority, while serving under Obama, to declassify those files. Nonetheless, the matter was irrelevant to the U.S. Department of Justice's review of Biden's handling of such files.

In January 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden faced scrutiny after news emerged that government classified files were found in a private office he used after serving as vice president in Barack Obama's administration, as well as in a storage container at his Delaware home. The reports came just months after the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property to obtain hundreds of classified documents there.

Comparisons between the two cases ran rampant. Among the alleged differences, according to some social media users, was that Biden, in his position as vice president, did not have the authority to declassify government documents, while Trump, as president, did.

"[Trump] as President had the unlimited power to declassify whereas VP Biden didn't," journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, for example.

However, the claim that federal law does not give vice presidents the power to declassify government documents, and reserves that authority for presidents, is false. 

Under a 2009 Obama-era executive order titled "Classified National Security Information" the vice president does have the power to declassify documents while they're in office. The order states: "The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by: (1) the President and the Vice President [...]," as well as "agency heads and officials designated by the President." 

It further elaborates on who has the authority:

(b) Information shall be declassified or downgraded by:

(1) the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position and has original classification authority;

(2) the originator's current successor in function, if that individual has original classification authority;

(3) a supervisory official of either the originator or his or her successor in function, if the supervisory official has original classification authority; or

(4) officials delegated declassification authority in writing by the agency head or the senior agency official of the originating agency.

The "original classification authority" is defined in the order as "an individual authorized in writing, either by the President, the Vice President, or by agency heads or other officials designated by the President, to classify information in the first instance." They can also determine when a document can be declassified: "At the time of original classification, the original classification authority shall establish a specific date or event for declassification based on the duration of the national security sensitivity of the information." 

Before the 2009 executive order, vice presidents could only classify and declassify documents under certain conditions. In 2003, former President George W. Bush issued an order in which "the authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by: (1) the President and, in the performance of executive duties, the Vice President." Prior to that, the vice president only had classification authority "comparable to that of an agency head, having been delegated such authority in a 1995 presidential order," as explained by Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists.

As of January 2023, Tom Blanton, director of the independent nongovernmental organization the National Security Archive, confirmed with Snopes that the 2009 executive order was still in effect, and that the vice president was an "original classification authority" in the sense that the elected official could, while still in office, declassify any federal document, including ones that other people have designated classified.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, a public-interest law firm told us that "The vice president can decide to classify a CIA, NSA, or USDA document on the spot in the same way that any other [original classification authority] can." And all original classification authorities have "inherent declassification authority."

He added: "[...] the president has the power to declassify anything he wants, period, and as a matter of practice in the intelligence community, everyone treats the [vice president] as having the same power derived from the presidential authority unless the president specifically says "no the [vice president] does not have declassification authority outside of information he created," which has never happened." 

He added that such a practice "has never been challenged to my knowledge." 

"Most [original classification authorities (OCAs)] don't generally exercise that declassification authority, but that is a simple matter of practice," he said. "Most OCAs prefer to let the declassification specialists (e.g. the FOIA office, the lawyers, etc.) handle declassification matters, but the authority is still there."

While it's true in Biden's case — that is, given that documents uncovered at his private office and Delaware home pertain to work during his vice presidency, he could have, while serving under Obama, declassified those files — that fact is irrelevant in terms of the U.S. Justice Department's review of the files and the circumstances under which they were kept. Rather, at the center of that effort, as well as the department's probe into documents uncovered at Trump's property, is the fact that such government files, classified or declassified, should not have been at their private properties in the first place. They should have been handed over to the National Archives instead, per federal law.

The New York Times stated, "While the [2009] executive order governing the classified information system gives vice presidents the same power to declassify secrets as presidents wield, Mr. Biden has not claimed he declassified the materials found in the Penn Biden Center closet," the location of the first batch of documents found. After the news broke about the first batch of discovered documents, Biden said he did not know what information the documents contained.

Blanton, of the National Security Archive, concurred: "I know of no suggestion that Biden had declassified any of what has been found."

Trump, however, has made the law governing who can classify, and declassify, documents part of his case. While defending himself for holding documents at Mar-a-Lago after his presidency, he said that, as president, he had the power to declassify everything that turned up in the FBI search. Furthermore, he claimed that he could declassify documents simply at will.

Trump was correct that presidents have the power to declassify documents. But experts pointed out to Politifact in 2022 that merely declaring a document declassified, or thinking that it is, does not make it so; federal law governing government documents requires presidents to follow certain steps to officially turn a classified file into a declassified one, which include physically modifying its markings. 

Commenting on the documents uncovered at Trump's Mar-a-Lago property, a three-judge appellate panel of the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit noted in 2022 there was "no evidence that any of these records were declassified." And even if Trump had declassified the documents using the federally-mandated steps to do so, he was still bound by federal law that requires presidents to return all government documents — classified or unclassified — to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) when they leave office. Declassifying a document would not "render it personal," the court stated. 

In sum, under an Obama-era executive order, vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify documents — just like presidents. Nonetheless, that fact was irrelevant to the DOJ's 2023 investigation into documents discovered at a former office and home of Biden.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#45

Post by Kendra »

Cross posting.


Ronny Jackson says the Special Counsel on the Biden docs, a Trump-appointed US Attorney unanimously confirmed the the Senate, is a Deep State operative who is part of a globalist conspiracy to cover for Biden.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#46

Post by Phoenix520 »

Everything old is new again.

What a dummy. I think alcohol has addled his brain beyond repair.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#47

Post by RTH10260 »

The Snopes article above and the discussion wether a VP had the power to declassify is interesting. But the issue is irrelevant as Biden never claimed to have declassified the lost&found documents.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#48

Post by MN-Skeptic »

@BradMossEsq, i.e. Bradley P. Moss, is a person I follow on Twitter. As CNN points out, Moss is "a partner and national security attorney at the Washington, DC, Law Office of Mark S. Zaid, P.C." Anyway, Moss had an opinion piece at CNN which brings up a good point. I'll quote the last part of the article -

Opinion: Trump and now Biden, too? It’s time to reform the classification process

:snippity:
That we are even talking about this issue, though, speaks to a second and separate matter, namely that of overclassification. This does not mean the documents held by Trump or Biden were improperly classified; I am not privy to that information. But mishandling of classified documents does happen.

There are millions of clearance holders in the federal bureaucracy, and the default desire to overclassify documents out of excessive abundances of caution means that there is simply too much classified paperwork floating around to properly manage.

Time and again, subject matter experts have warned about the issue of overclassification. The 9/11 Commission criticized it. The former solicitor general who argued the Pentagon Papers case on behalf of the US government later criticized it. Former leaders at NARA have raised it in testimony before Congress. The last congressional reform on the matter was more than 10 years ago.

It is easy to suggest Trump’s chaotic West Wing was an anomaly in security handling and that his behavior is not reflective of a larger problem. The Obama White House, however, was notoriously buttoned-up in its adherence to security protocols in its offices, and there is no indication that Biden’s staffers in the vice president’s office were any different.

That even they made errors in retention and storage speaks to an issue of just how unwieldly the classified mountain has become.

There will be hearings into all of this, particularly with the new Republican House. There will be political gamesmanship, no doubt. But if anything is to be resolved, it should be to determine if there is a need for a renewed effort to incentivize reforms to this process.
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#49

Post by RTH10260 »

Biden’s Delaware home is now a player in document drama

By SEUNG MIN KIM
yesterday

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s President Joe Biden’s refuge from Washington — a place that’s part home office, part Sunday family dinner venue, a safe place for his treasured 1967 Corvette and a makeshift campaign studio during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now, Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, is coming under fresh scrutiny as a repository of classified material.

The White House confirmed Thursday that classified records were found in the garage of Biden’s Wilmington home, as well as an adjacent room that the president later identified as his personal library. The disclosure came three days after the White House said similarly classified materials were located at Biden’s former institute in Washington. The discoveries, taken together, prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to tap a special counsel to oversee the matter.




https://apnews.com/article/biden-politi ... 7bd95e86ba
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Biden's misplaced classified docs, special prosector assigned

#50

Post by raison de arizona »

More pages found at Biden’s home, reporting says five. RWNJ media is really playing up the Hunter Biden issue, i.e. Hunter has access to these classified materials.
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