Sunday, January 15, 2023

Schumer is correct. There is no equity in the way the Trump and Biden cases are handled.

So much for equal treatment under the law. It seems as though immunity from investigation is only for Republicans. Under Bill Barr no one could touch Trump and his family. All of a sudden all that has changed (click here).

January 15, 2023
By Ben Blanchet

...“It’s not just, hold on, it’s not just us buzzing around (click here) — you’re the Democratic head of the Senate,” said Lemon after Schumer remarked that all the hosts want to do is “buzz around” on the case.

“This is a really important issue. It’s not just buzzing around. This is serious stuff.”

Schumer said prosecutors will get to the bottom of the matter and suggested that if there wasn’t a special counsel there’d be a “different thing to say” on the situation.

“I think we should have a special prosecutor on each,” said Schumer regarding both Biden’s case and former President Donald Trump’s case involving classified materials at Mar-a-Lago.

“I don’t mind [that] you’re asking these questions, but my view is I’m not going to say anything. Let the special prosecutors do their job,” the Senate Democratic leader said....

The greatest difference between the two cases is transparency. Biden's attorneys willingly handed the found documents to the National Archives. Trump's attorneys lied about the documents, eventually turned them over after they negotiated the return. Negotiated? What is there to negotiate? What did they negotiate, freedom vs. prosecution? The attorneys for the President have no right to negotiate with the National Archives. The National Archives are not part of the Justice Department as if they could actually guarantee Trump immunity from prosecution.

...Trump has made the dubious claim that, (click here) as president, he issued a “standing order” declassifying all of the documents that were taken to his Florida estate. As we wrote in August, numerous experts on national security and the law surrounding classified documents say that is not plausible. Also, Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, told the New York Times he never heard of Trump’s alleged standing order and that it is “almost certainly a lie.”

Furthermore, in his statement, Sauber, Biden’s special counsel, indicated that Biden’s attorneys voluntarily turned over the documents found at the Penn Biden Center and then notified NARA of their existence. As we also have written, in Trump’s case, federal officials contacted his team about the missing presidential records and then had to negotiate the return of the materials over a series of months before the FBI obtained a court-authorized search warrant for Mar-a-Lago because Trump wasn’t fully cooperating.

In January 2022, Trump representatives initially transported 15 boxes containing presidential records to the National Archives and said they were searching for any additional records, according to a NARA statement. That was after NARA made multiple requests between May and December 2021 for the missing documents, according to the Justice Department. (For more, read “Timeline of FBI Investigation of Trump’s Handling of Highly Classified Documents.”)...

The Timeline is ridiculous (click here). Trump had plenty of time to make everything right and he did nothing but obstruct. When it comes to dealing with Republicans there is nothing but corruption of the processes of the Rule of Law the USA Constitution demands.

...Article II, Section 3: (click here)

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

In its 1867 decision Mississippi v. Johnson, the Supreme Court established that the President is largely beyond the reach of the judiciary by holding that it could not direct President Andrew Johnson in how he exercised his purely executive and political powers. The Court stated, it had no jurisdiction . . . to enjoin the President in the performance of his official duties. 

In subsequent decisions, however, the Court made clear that Johnson does not stand for the proposition that the President is immune from judicial process. For example, in United States v. Nixon, the Court held that President Richard Nixon was amenable to a subpoena to produce evidence for use in a federal criminal case. There, the President had argued that he was immune to judicial process, claiming that the independence of the Executive Branch within its own sphere insulates a President from a judicial subpoena in an ongoing criminal prosecution.4 The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed, holding that neither the doctrine of separation of powers, nor the need for confidentiality of high-level communications, without more, can sustain an absolute, unqualified Presidential privilege of immunity from judicial process under all circumstances. The Court noted that the constitutional duty of courts to do justice in criminal prosecutions was counterbalanced by the claim of presidential immunity. To accept the President’s argument, the Court further reasoned, would undermine the separation of powers that was at the core of a workable government as well as gravely impair the role of the courts under Art. III....


Schumer is correct, there is no equal treatment under the law for President Biden in comparison of Trump's obvious obstruction of justice.