Trump: I could declassify documents by thinking about it

trouble13 said:

It's an invalid argument because it assumes a legal restriction on the POTUS that does not exist.

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Paradoxical said:

This is unworthy of a reply. You guys think he took out boxes and showed them to fioreigners. this is cray cray

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WorldWatcher said:

#1 It is not "his house", it's a publicly accessible country club with members, guest, and hotel staff. And no, the Secret Service was not there to control access to government documents in basement storage rooms and the "45 Office".

#2 There are two aspects to classified data access: Security Clearance and Need to Know.

So who may have had access to either the storage area or "45 Office"...

• The FFLOTUS (Former First Lady of the United States, who holds no clearance or need to know)
• The FPOTUS's children (who hold no clearance or need to know)
• The FPOTUS Staff (who hold no clearance or need to know)
• The FPOTUS Lawyers (who hold no clearance or need to know)
• MAL Service Staff (who hold no clearance or need to know and includes a number of foreign nationals)**
• MAL Maintenance Staff (who hold no clearance or need to know)
• Members of the Secret Service (who may have a clearance but no need to know)
• The of course you have the FPOTUS himself who may or may not have a clearance, you would have to check with the current administration to see if that was suspended. But who does not have the 2nd requirement which is need to know.

**https://www.forbes.com/sites/zachev...91-foreign-workers-this-year/?sh=1dd6d7b249fc

The of course we have guests and visitors that the FPOTUS may have invited to the club and or the residence.

Here you have an entrepreneur that visited the FPOTUS in his office at MAL. You can tell based on the brick-a-brac and the carpet, the carpet matches the evidence photo that the DOJ included.


WW

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Rawley said:

That's why I gave up on these guys. Their TDS forces them into the most bizarre positions.

That, and the fact that Biden is never going to indict Trump

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CaughtInThe said:

and all that top secret (and above) stuff in the hotel house visited frequently by the craziest of the crazy...


"Trump spent significant time at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency—dubbing the club the “Winter White House”—and changed his primary address to the club in 2019 from Trump Tower in New York City. Since making his home at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House, Trump has frequently met with Republican politicians and major figures at the Florida spot, including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who tweeted on Tuesday that he had just eaten dinner with the ex-president at the club."

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pamak said:

You confuse an assumption with an argument which was based on the exact same starting point that Trumpers use when they try to defend Trump, meaning the ultimate authority of a sitting president. If you want to call this starting point an "assumption," then we both operate under the same assumption. The difference is that your argument of what Trump can do leads to a contradiction regarding the ultimate authority of a sitting president while my reasoning of what Trump cannot do maintains consistency regarding the ultimate authority of a president. The legal restriction was the CONCLUSION of my argument and it was based on the fact that absence of such legal restriction (as you were trying to argue) leads to the contradiction mentioned above.

You also ignore the articulated legal restrictions I pointed from EOs and Congressional Acts such as the Atomic Energy Act.

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pamak said:

And just to help you learn the basics of a debate, let me give you one link that can help you differentiate the different parts of reasoning so that you learn to distinguish a premise from a conclusion.

Arguments, Premises and Conclusion - SlideServe

Arguments, Premises and Conclusion. Fundamentals of Logic Unit – 1 Chapter – 2. The relationship among argument, premises and conclusion:. Arguments:.

www.slideserve.com

The premise is the assumption that we both accept regarding the foremost authority of a sitting president (at least, I accept it as long as the information is not related to restricted data related to nuclear information).

My conclusion is that the sitting president has legal obligations to leave an accurate declassification record for the upcoming president.

I arrived at the conclusion based on an argument.

Apparently, you try to debate without knowing basic logic. This is why Trump loves his uneducated simpletons!

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pamak said:

I know that the documents he had had classification markings. I also know that the excuse his supporters use that supposedly these documents were the declassified files from Operation Crossfire Hurricane is not convincing because that Operation STILL retained classified information even after his memo, and because his supporters do not know what files he possessed. So, their excuse is just stupid.

Also, the fact that the accepted FBI recommendations were about REDACTIONS, shows that the documents that were the subject of Trump's memo contained BOTH classified info which was to be redacted, and info which Trump wanted declassified. Since REDACTIONS need process and time to be implemented, and the memo was issued on January 19, 2017, it means that if Trump got these documents, he got classified info which had not been redacted yet.

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pamak said:

I do not know who saw these files, but I do know that Donald was not the one who filled these storage boxes. and I do know that Donald has many foreign guests in the place where he keeps these highly classified documents. He also has a propensity to attract low-lives who have a record of working for foreign interests, such as Flynn and Manafort. He also has many foreign workers in his estate.

Time to welcome new batch of foreign workers to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club/crime scene | Frank Cerabino

From columnist Frank Cerabino: Trump's Mar-a-Lago seeks to hire 91 temporary foreign workers this season as club is focal point of misuse of nation's top secrets.

news.yahoo.com

News item: The Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach has filed a request with the U.S. Department of Labor to hire 91 temporary foreign workers next month to staff the club as housekeepers, cooks and servers during the upcoming season

So, because of the insecure storage of these highly classified documents, Trump has damaged national security.

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WorldWatcher said:

No. An NARA facility. Obama’s documents are not being stored in a furniture warehouse.

It may have been in the past, but no longer.

WW

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pamak said:

@trouble13

And for those who oversimplify serious issues with their partisan nonsense of a president's "ultimate classification power," feel free to show if this applies to every atomic-related classified information. Hint, it does NOT! The Atomic Energy Act created the concept of "born classification," meaning that certain nuclear related information is born classified. Such information does not require any decision by a president to become classified. The authority of this automatic classification at birth comes from this Atomic Energy Act (Congressional Act).

From

Security Classification of Information​

Volume 1. Introduction, History, and Adverse Impacts​

https://sgp.fas.org/library/quist/chap_4.pdf

The “born classified” concept is unique with RD.† This concept assumes that newly discovered atomic-energy information might be so significant with respect to the nation’s security that it requires immediate and absolute control.41,‡ Information classified by executive order (currently termed classified national security information) is not so designated until an original classifier makes a positive determination that the information falls within the definition of classified national security information.§ Donald B. Woodbridge, former Department of Energy Contractor Classification Officer, has characterized the term “born classified” as words that “give the professional classificationist unanswerable authority.

So, while Obama's EO 13526 is addressing the classification and declassification of national security information, the classification and declassification of atomic-related information is controlled by a Congressional Act

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snakestretcher said:

Nothing Trump does surprises me any more. He's such a sad, compulsive braggart that I wouldn't be surprised if, 'look what I got!' was said to someone inappropriate.

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trouble13 said:

I did not ignore your articulated legal restrictions which were well made by you, I might add. You told me upfront that you would ignore my argument before I made it. At that point I saw no reason to present my position. There's no point in it.

At some point both is us need to agree to disagree. The courts will sort it out and we everyone will need to live with what they decide.

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trouble13 said:

If anyone was ever wondering what the Progressive version of man-splaining looks like. Check out pamaks post above. Apparently im not debating correctly lol.

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Paradoxical said:

Still doesn't matter. He has proof positive that he declassified those documents. That the markings hadn't been removed is irrelevant. The prez has wide-ranging powers.

Look, I know you love the FBI and think they are "As seen on TV" getting the bad guys, but they ARE the bad guys. They were getting worried that Trump was going to expose their crimes.

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Paradoxical said:

No atomic energy secrets were involved. Once again, MSM lied about it. You swallowed the lie hook, line and sinker, as usual

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snakestretcher said:

Well,
Do you know what he did or did not do with all that Top Secret material? No, so don't assume you do. Biden won't indict; it's not his job, but maybe someone else will. With Trump's dismal record of law-breaking taken into account, it wouldn't surprise me at all to see him facing a judge.

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Paradoxical said:

Silly putty.

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pamak said:

No he does not. He just makes a CLAIM which contradicts EVERY practice we have seen up until now in the executive branch, including the practice he followed during his government because he issued a memo (thus communicated his decisions) when he declassified parts of Operation Crossfire Hurricane on the LAST FULL DAY of his presidency. That clai also contradicts previous court decisions

https://casetext.com/case/ny-times-v-cent-intelligence-agency

Declassification cannot occur unless designated officials follow specified procedures


Trump's claim also leads to a contradiction with respect to a sitting president's constitutional powers as I explained in previous posts

I know you believe in Trump the hero who tries to expose FBI's dirty laundry but again your narrative is destroyed by the fact that Trump ACCEPTED FBI's recommendations for redacting information related to Crossfire Hurricane that was meant to remain classified.

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pamak said:

You speculate. We will need to wait and see. I am just pointing the fact that all those who talk about a president's unconstrained authority of declassification, oversimplify a complex subject and ignore many of the legal constrains that DO exist even for presidents.

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pamak said:

If it was silly, you would have tried to confront it. The fact that you do not even try to do so shows that it is not so silly as you try to portray it

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Rawley said:

Well, you're surprised by microwave popcorn. Biden will not indict him over some documents. His handlers know the blowback will be like you've never seen

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Paradoxical said:

At this point, debunking your every post is as useless as trying to tell you that...NO...Trump did not collude with Russia and the FBI and Perkins Coie set it all up. IOW, silly putty.

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Paradoxical said:

The FBI called WaPo and told them to say that nuclear secrets were there knowing that no one could ever disprove that, amirite? The next call was to find out when the tickets for the opera and five-star restaurant would be delivered to them at the lavish condo owned by WaPo in Hawaii they would be staying at

The prez does NOT have constrained authority on declassification. You are wrong once again. Why are you always so wrong? Listening to too much MSM?

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pamak said:

At this point you cannot refute a post which destroys your claim that Trump's locks created a secured place for storing classified documents. And by the way, in contrast to what you were claiming before, that you supposedly address every post, the reality is that you ignore most of the points made by the people who challenge you. This talking point (hiring of foreign workers at Mar-a-Lago) has been used again in this thread. it is just that just like now, you ignored it then.

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