Did Trump Break a Law That Shouldn't Exist?

Plus: A rundown of recent nonsensical proposals for constitutional amendments

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Did Trump Break a Law That Shouldn't Exist?

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman break down the latest indictment of former President Donald Trump associated with the collection of classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago home.

0:21: Donald Trump indicted again

31:59: Weekly Listener Question

40:57: Senseless constitutional amendments

49:18: This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Trump's Own Attorney General Says Indictment Is 'Very, Very Damning,'" by Robby Soave

"Donald Trump Indicted on More Than 30 Charges in Classified Documents Case," C.J. Ciaramella

"Trump Indicted, Faces Federal Criminal Charges Under Espionage Act," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

"Trump's New York Indictment Was Just the Beginning of His Legal Woes," by Eric Boehm

"Trump's Impeachment Trial Will Only Make Us Hate Washington Even More," by Nick Gillespie

"Let Us Now Thank Donald Trump for Revealing Brutal Truths About How Power and Privilege Operate," by Nick Gillespie

"All This Impeachment Talk Is Pure Trump Derangement Syndrome," by Nick Gillespie

"FBI Director Recommends Against Prosecuting Hillary Clinton Over Email Actions," by Nick Gillespie

"Trump Reportedly Viewed a Supposedly Declassified Document As a Secret He Was Not Allowed To Share," by Jacob Sullum

"Donald Trump's Handling of Classified Material Looks Worse Than Hillary Clinton's," by Jacob Sullum

"Trump's Lawyers Say It's Not Clear Whether 'Purported' Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago 'Remain Classified,'" by Jacob Sullum

"Gavin Newsom Wants To 'Permanently Enshrine' Gun Control in the U.S. Constitution," by Jacob Sullum

"Hillary Clinton's Use of a Private Email Server Perfectly Explains Why People Don't Trust Her," by Peter Suderman

"Hillary Clinton Keeps Making Untrue Claims About Her Use of a Private Email Server," by Peter Suderman

"What Critics of the FBI's Clinton Investigation Get Right," by Jacob Sullum

"Clinton Lies About Lying About Her Lies," by Jacob Sullum

"Yet Another Shady, Hypocritical Document Hoarder," by Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and Matt Welch

"How a college term paper led to a constitutional amendment," by Scott Bomboy at the National Constitution Center

"The Public Has a Right To See the Nashville Shooter's Writings," by J.D. Tuccille

Send your questions to [e-mail]. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsor:

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• The Reason Speakeasy. The Reason Speakeasy is a monthly, unscripted conversation in New York City with outspoken defenders of free thinking and heterodoxy. It doubles as a live taping of The Reason Interview podcast and always provides a great evening of camaraderie and conversation about cutting-edge topics and ideas. On June 26, Nick Gillespie talks with Tara Isabella Burton, author of the phenomenal new book Self-Made: Creating Our Identities From Da Vinci to the Kardashians. As in her previous Strange Rites: New Religions for a Godless World, Burton zeroes in on the amazing freedom we have to define our reality and all the complications, problems, and possibilities that come along with such freedom. They'll talk about her findings in Self-Made, whether Kim or Kris is the ultimate Kardashian, the insights she picked up while getting a Ph.D. in theology from Oxford, and how traditional and modern cultures mix uneasily. Tickets are $10 and include beer, wine, soda, food, and plenty of time to talk about politics, culture, and ideas in one of the coolest settings in midtown Manhattan. For details, go here.

Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

What are we consuming this week?

Nick Gillespie

• Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians

Peter Suderman

• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Katherine Mangu-Ward

• The Unabomber Manifesto: Industrial Society and Its Future

Matt Welch

• The Wrecking Crew!

---

Comments

[Fats of Fury]

Excuse the repetition.
According to Wikipedia the USA is now a totalitarian state
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_police
Secret police (or political police)[3] are police, intelligence, or security agencies that engage in covert operations against a government's political, religious, or social opponents and dissidents. Secret police organizations are characteristic of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.[4] They protect the political power of a dictator or regime and often operate outside the law to repress dissidents and weaken political opposition, frequently using violence

[Mother's Lament]

True story.

[VendicarD]

You Conservatards need to raise an army and take back America by force.

Violent Revolution is the only way.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

If he didn't break a law that exists, they'll prosecute him for breaking one that doesn't exist!

[Public Entelectual]

There ought to be a law against boring vulgarians from Archie Bunker's hood.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

And the wrong people winning elections.

[Mother's Lament]

Do you actually believe the Aristos think you're one of them, Shrike?

[Public Entelectual]

There's nothing wrong with the electorate- Trump lost.

[VendicarD]

Oh, I think that stealing classified state nuclear secrets is against the law, little Retardo Boy.

[Zeb]

It isn't when you are president.

[VendicarD]

It is no matter who you are.

Or are you just saying that the president is above the law, like any other tin pot dictator?

[Mother's Lament]

According to Judicial Watch v. the NARA he didn’t even break a law that shouldn’t exist.

What Garland is doing with some of the charges via his Smith puppet, is exactly what Alvin Bragg is doing. Charging Trump for doing things that aren’t illegal.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

It's intended to be harassment and cause legal issues for the man. Basically, it gives the appearance that they want to tie his hands and keep him out of the race.

[JesseAz]

They are stacking charges so when he gets off people like sullum can point to the number of charges as if they were real.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Are you sure? My neighbor told that Trump's very existence is some sort of crime.

[VendicarD]

"Trump’s very existence is some sort of crime."

The Christian God works in mysterious ways, we are told.

In reality, it's all just Low IQ Republican mental illness.

[VendicarD]

What does a Americus brief from Judicial watch arguing that audio tapes from the Clinton Administration are covered under the Presidential record act, have to do with Trump stealing state secrets?

You little Libertarian quackadoodle you.

[VendicarD]

"According to Judicial Watch v. the NARA he didn’t even break a law that shouldn’t exist."

Which shows how corrupt Judicial watch is.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

From a year ago, but still relevant.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/billionaire-family-pushing-synthetic-sex-identities-ssi-pritzkers

One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions.

Ever since, a motivating and driving force behind the Pritzkers’ familywide commitment to SSI has been J.B.’s cousin Jennifer (born James) Pritzker—a retired lieutenant colonel in the Illinois Army National Guard and the father of three children. In 2013, around the time gender ideology reached the level of mainstream American culture, Jennifer Pritzker announced a transition to womanhood. Since then, Pritzker has used the Tawani Foundation to help fund various institutions that support the concept of a spectrum of human sexes, including the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, the Williams Institute UCLA School of Law, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Palm Military Center, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), and many others. Tawani Enterprises, the private investment counterpart to the philanthropic foundation, invests in and partners with Squadron Capital LLC, a Chicago-based private investment vehicle that acquires a number of medical device companies that manufacture instruments, implants, cutting tools, and injection molded plastic products for use in surgeries.

[Eeyore]

Let us just jump straight to the reintroduction of eunuchs. All of the elites can have one for each of their houses.

Extra status if they have a eunuch who underwent zero depth vaginoplasty surgery.

"We are fighting for your right to be castrated and serve us as a genderless slave."

[VendicarD]

This is horrific. How dare the free market conspire with willing trans Americans to alter their bodies to match their gender.

We need a nanny state to prevent this from happening, don't we Libertarian boy?

[Don't look at me!]

If trump broke the law, so did Joe.
Or was it because he didn’t give the papers back “without a hassle”?

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Even if Trump didn't break a law here, Biden sure as hell did. Some of those documents go back to when he was a Senator, and last I looked, Senators did not get to keep any of these documents, much less have the power to declassify them like a President.

[VULGAR MADMAN]

Senators have more power than the president, duh!

[JesseAz]

Comey, never even elected, admitted to taking classified documents home on his FBI laptop.

[Public Entelectual]

So did CIA director John Deutsch: He was fired and fined the year that he was hired.

[Don't look at me!]

What? No 100 years in jail?

[Public Entelectual]

The judge wanted to sentence him to read 100 Years of Solitude, but the supremes said forcing him to read a book would be cruel & unusual

[VendicarD]

"If trump broke the law, so did Joe."

The difference is that Trump willingly conspired to break the law.

Biden didn't.

[Bruce Hayden]

Facts not in evidence. All you have to support that is an Indictment that skipped certain critical information, as did the case to the grand jury, and some selective, illegal, leaks by the DOJ.

Here are some of the missing facts:
1) the documents marked classified were, mostly, if not totally, found in boxes that very likely had not been opened since staff cleaned off Trump’s desk when he was POTUS. They were found mixed in with documents corresponding to specific meetings and calls that relate to the documents marked as classified. Staff would clear his desk after such a meeting or call, in preparation for the next one.
2) All of the documents marked as classified were copies. So, the only question is whether Trump legally had those copies. None were originals (which is what Sandy Berger sneaked out in his Sox).
3) Trump had plenary authority to declassify whatever he wanted while POTUS. And, according to the Clinton tape case, he also had plenary authority to determine what were personal records and what were Presidential records. Not NARA. Not the FBI operating through NARA (ordered by the Biden WH). NARA, and the FBI (directly and through NARA) can’t second guess him.
4) Under the PRA, NARA is required to take possession of Presidential records, move them to, and store them in a secure location, then have ODNI (and not the FBI) look through them for classified documents. This service had been provided to Obama GW Bush, and Obama. It was denied Trump.
5) The MAL raid appears to have been ordered by, and overseen by Jeff Bratt, DOJ Counterintelligence and Export Branch Chief. He requested documents marked classified from Trump, then refused to work with Trump’s attorneys, denying their request for rolling document production, or enough time to go through hundreds of boxes of documents looking for documents marked classified. This, of course required attorneys with high level security clearances, which are in short supply, esp in FL and with the pressure not to represent Trump. The inability to produce all of documents marked classified in the short time allowed by Bratt was the predicate for the MAL raid (which was run by Bratt from HQ - violating protocol that requires that raids like this be run out of the local field office.
6) Bratt is now also an Asst Special Counsel. He signed the indictment. He is also the branch chief of the organization that, along with the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division, were incriminated in Crossfire Hurricane, RussiaGate, and the 4 fraudulently acquired FISA warrants on Carter Page. The documents in possession of Trump still marked classified that he knew that Trump had, were in the binder of documents that Trump had formally ordered declassified his last full day in office. They implicated both Bratt’s branch and the FBI’s CD in the above malfeasance and illegal actions.

Why is all this relevant? For one thing, it does a fairly good job of negating both the Intent and Materiality elements for both the Espionage Act and §1001 Obstruction charges.

[I, Woodchipper]

Yes

Everyone commits a bunch of "crimes" every day.

The point of overloading the statutes with a million crimes that pretty much cover anything anyone will ever do is for precisely this reason: so that the regime can go after it's enemies for simply behaving normally.

[Nardz]

If POTUS, any POTUS, removes documents, or shows those documents to someone, while serving as POTUS, those documents are de facto and de jure declassified thereby.

[Public Entelectual]

Explain how if POTUS, any POTUS, should remove the heads of members of Congress while serving as POTUS, those beheadings would be de facto and de jure decriminalized thereby?

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

Hey, slow down there, Slick. You're not supposed to talk about the 2028 WEF Party agenda yet.

[Public Entelectual]

The party will in celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Trump's Davos debut

[Nardz]

This might be one of your stupidest responses ever, and that's quite the accomplishment

[Zeb]

The difference is that beheading congress isn't part of the president's constitutional authority as executive. Classifying documents and determining what is and isn't kept secret is. Laws about classification can't apply to the president or it would violate separation of powers.

[Michael Ejercito]

I would apply this equally to Obama.

Of course, this does not mean that Obama (or Trump for that matter) gets to keep the documents. Any dispute on whether or not they get to keep the documents would normally be settled by civil litigation, not criminal prosecution.

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/JoshFL321/status/1668214955080859650?t=PcvJWksFX7Ma3tkBGXE9uA&s=19

Both photos have the same thing wrong with them, can you tell me what it is?

[Pic]

[Super Scary]

“Both photos have the same thing wrong with them, can you tell me what it is?”

One of the US flags on the picture on the right is missing a star?

[Brett Bellmore]

Violation of the US flag code. Which, while it isn't actually binding on private citizens, you'd think the government itself would be bound to follow.

[Earth-based Human Skeptic]

We have to look at that fascist US flag?

[hokey]

Saying "Doing the Thing" is condescending and doesn't really add anything to conversation. No matter how hard you try with it, you are not cool for using it. Please stop.

[MasterThief]

Someone is tired of KMW's condescending speech pattern.

[DesigNate]

Everyone.

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/PeterRQuinones/status/1668286370085847046?t=3s25ir7DeAmVnr2oaVbynQ&s=19

A reminder that the Libertarian Party of Texas had this pedophile as a speaker last year.

I would tag them but they've blocked me.

[Link]

[DesigNate]

Jennifer Haubein @jhaubein · 13h No they didn’t they cancelled him thanks to outrage from many members within LPTexas and Spike and Hannah.

Peter R. Quinones @PeterRQuinones · 12h I did not know that.

But he was initially invited by LP Texas leadership, obviously.

Patrick Mitchell @TheBluesMan361 · 12h And the person who invited him is no longer in a leadership position in Texas

Gee, I wonder why the Mises Caucus was able to “take over” the party.

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1668370092734939136?t=HC28VLQYrXbl3tOfn8DyRg&s=19

BREAKING: Sen. Grassley reveals Ukrainian oil exec who bribed Joe Biden w/$5 million kept 2 secret recordings of calls w/him about the deal & 15 recordings w/Hunter

This is why the DOJ indicted Trump in the same week this was declassified

[Link]

[Super Scary]

2 Biden calls and 15 Hunter calls? Not quite 10%, but still relatively consistent for The Big Guy.

[Unicorn Abattoir]

1.5 Biden calls. They just rounded up.

[Stuck in California]

Maybe the second call was recent. Biden's not all there anymore.

[Nardz]

Indeed it does

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1667715777145847808?t=b2gje_114s3L7aiGB9G-7w&s=19

Today, the People's House – your house – sends a clear message to the country and to the world.

America is a nation of pride.

[Pic]

[Nardz]

https://twitter.com/loganclarkhall/status/1668369215290593283?t=lHZg44slBx3XUc5mGdhSTw&s=19

newsflash for conservatives: leftists laugh at you thinking they actually care about violating rules, norms, laws, constitutional processes, etc. they only care about exercising power over you.

[Link]

[Unicorn Abattoir]

Dude, if they haven't figured that out by now...

[Mother's Lament]

That might've been a newsflash in 2019, but now...

Also, it's not just conservatives but anyone to the right of Pol Pot.

[West Coast Patriot]

He didn't break any law. Navy v Egan: 484 U.S.518 (1988) says the Commander & Chief has authority, that flows from the Constitution, to classify and control access to information bearing on national security...and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.
All Trump has to say is he declassified all documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, wait, he DID say that, therefore they are all declassified. What he did to the reporter is classic Trump, posing a piece of paper as a "classified document" for the sole purpose of saying all documents were declassified because if he hadn't done that his last day, he couldn't now. Trump Derangement Syndrome is real folks!

[SRG]

All Trump has to say is he declassified all documents taken to Mar-a-Lago, wait, he DID say that, therefore they are all declassified.

He recently said that he didn't declassify them. But let's face it, if Trump didn't declassify them and sent a top nuclear secrets doc to Putin, you lot would still be weaselling away explaining why it was all good, nothing to see here, it's TDS, etc etc

[Mother's Lament]

"But let’s face it, if Trump didn’t declassify them and sent a top nuclear secrets doc to Putin"

Fantasy scenarios based around the 2016 Hillary campaign's big lie is all you've got left, isn't it?
One would think with what we now know about the DNCs Trump-Russia shenanigans, you'd be too embarrassed to even invoke it.

[DesigNate]

Can you imagine if he was fucking a Chinese National spy?

[West Coast Patriot]

You are a weak minded individual if you believe that crap. He was doing as Trump always does, using a hypothetical to make his point that the docs were declassified. The paper he waved wasn't anything! The Fake News just leads you by your nose.

[Zeb]

No, it would be really bad if he sent nuclear secrets to Putin. But it's still within the president's power to declassify such documents on a whim. And if a president gives a document to someone or makes it public, then it is declassified.

[Pear Satirical]

So when is Reason covering the Biden Bribery scandal?

[Mother's Lament]

When Charles Koch tells them to.

[Pear Satirical]

So never.

[Liberty Lover]

Either Trump didn't break any law, or Biden, Pence, H. Clinton and almost any president in office broke the records act.
18 U.S. Code § 798 - Disclosure of classified information
But Trump wasn't charged under that, because all those other people that had records would have to be charged too. Instead they tried to stretch the charge again, to the espionage act:
What is the Espionage Act?

The Espionage Act of 1917, enacted just after the beginning of World War I, makes it illegal to obtain information, capture photographs or copy descriptions of any information relating to national defense, with the intent for that information to be used against the United States or for the gain of any foreign nation.

That is ridiculous, another targeted indictment to stop Trump from running for President. We now officially live in a Banana Republic brought to you by Joe Biden and the current Democratic party.

And Reason, where are the investigate stories into Joe Biden's influence peddling, bribery taking, money washing crimes? There are real bank records and recordings about these crimes, but all Reason does in bitch about Republican candidates. Reason has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

[JimmyK24601]

Thanks for at least asking this question. It seems like recently Reason has declared its name a lost cause and jumped on the whatever-anti-Trump-is-good Bandwagon. I literally have been on the other side of a lawsuit against his companies and I support him more than you do. Libertarian my $$$

[Twiz123]

I totally disagree with the podcast's assertion that Trump loves being hated. This is a chicken or the egg argument. Because they hated him right out of the gate...I question whether he had to embrace the hate because they never gave him a shot or if he just likes to piss off the media.

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[VendicarD]

Trump was routed.

If he has a second kick at the can, he is going to lose by even larger numbers.

That makes me laugh.