this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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[–] frezik@midwest.social -1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The treason here would be in the moral sense, not the legal sense. He was President at the time he handed over the lists, and the secrecy of these lists derive from the power of the executive in the first place. He could hand out whatever classified documents he wanted to anyone, and it's 100% legal. Even without the Supreme Court recently expanding the "official acts" coverage, this would be easily covered.

Congress could have impeached him for it, but we all know how that would go. Voters rejecting him is the only real remedy.

He did not have the right to keep those docs at Mar-a-lago, however.

The media should be giving this far more attention than they ever gave to Hillary's emails.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I'm not quite sure that President is above the law until impeached, and that's what I see in your message

[–] frezik@midwest.social 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Then you read it wrong. This is a place where it really isn't illegal when the President does it, because the President is allowed to simply choose what is classified in the first place.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Shouldn't the president first choose to declassify then? Or is it ok for the president to choose ad-hoc to declassify for someone specifically without even informing anyone else?

[–] frezik@midwest.social 3 points 2 weeks ago

Should? Perhaps. An awful lot of powers of the President should be scaled back.

I'm not sure this one can without big changes to the system.

When the raid that killed Bin Laden was announced, Obama simply decided to do that. The operation was classified right up to the moment Obama sent that message.