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[Thorfinn]

The problem with your argument, Max, is that if they WERE declassified, it is not a crime for those people to have them. In fact, it's not a crime for YOU to have them. So if there is to be an indictment, it has to be over documents that are, in fact, classified. Well, sort of. A good prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich and all that, and, of course, a DC jury would without question exonerate a Democrat and nail a Republican to the wall, particularly if we are talking Trump.

We also have no idea what happened with the Biden documents any more than we know what happened with the Trump ones. But the Trump ones would require the complicity of the Secret Service, who were responsible for the secure location, and the Biden ones would require the complicity of Hunter, or Jim, or Joe's cleaning lady, or Joe's pool boy, or even the cleaning staff at the Penn Biden Center. Those locations never were secured.

Not how it works, None. Back when I had very limited access, I was patted down both before and after, as well as watched by a pair of security guards. While if we were talking about mid-level bureaucrats or especially military, missing documents would all get intensive investigations, including probably midnight raids and possible anal probes, they do not do that to Senators or other important people. It's just logged, and if it's deemed important enough, might get investigated.

[None]

So the documents are important enough to raid people, pat them down at checkpoints for, and anally probe for, including military personnel, yet unimportant enough to just log for a rainy day if it's a public figure, yet important enough to start an investigation now, yet not important enough that they wouldn't go looking for Biden's documents when he was no longer a public figure (not vice president) or even check the logs for discrepancies (for years), yet important enough now that Joe's cleaning lady might be involved?

And your out to the matter is that 'Joe maybe secretly declassified the documents the same way that Donald Trump magically declassified his documents by thinking about them?' The same documents that don't themselves get declassified, but the contents within do?

So, not at all a matter of gross negligence and bookkeeping, but a question of whose magical authority to 'declassify documents' is observed in order to validate Trump's Calvinball governance in a 'both-sides-are-the-same' argument.

Not how this works, eh?

[Thorfinn]

Almost nothing I ever saw should have been classified in the first place. I'm firmly convinced that most of the stuff in the folders was there so you didn't have to also bring in a folder of declassified stuff and piece together the connections between them, then separate them into the correct folders at the end. That's why I strongly suspect this whole thing is over nothing. If it were really important pieces of paper, it would have been investigated, at least on the sly. More than likely, if it was anything at all, it was not state secret, but maybe some trade secrets or something someone could act on as a hot stock tip. See Nancy Pelosi's amazing stock picking.

I think it's just a political distraction. Not that it could not result in convictions. Ham sandwich, again.

The SCIF is relatively new, at least to me -- back in the '80s, they just brought a folder into a conference room and watched you go through it.

[hector13]

You’re so boring with the biases man.

At least come up with something interesting, like she was attempting to corner the pizza ingredient market because her alien overlords like a decent bake and a ridiculous profit.

[Micro102]

Can we dispel this idea that if a lawyer just talks in the right way, it can make crimes appear or disappear? The public wouldn't be shown the contents of classified documents so of course you wouldn't see anything classified, and making up what-ifs to justify something that resulted in an FBI raid while saying that if they were really illegal then there would have been an investigation, is really dumb. The FBI wouldn't raid a former president for no fucking reason.

Sticking to the "well after Trump was found with the documents he can just say that he declassified them while in office with no paperwork or notice and therefore it's ok" is also incredibly suspicious too. It's just a bad argument solely created to let Trump get away without consequences.

[Thorfinn]

Hector13, are you talking about Pelosi? That's a real thing. Look up "Nancy Pelosi stock pick" on your browser. There are mutual funds that do nothing but copy the trades she executes, and even though the trades lag, sometimes by days in the case of a weekend, they consistently outperform the best managed funds. Just look it up.

[EDIT]
If this wasn't just partisan, but you genuinely want to see whether you can make money on the inside information Congress has, two great sites are

https://housestockwatcher.com/ and
https://senatestockwatcher.com/
[/EDIT]

Can we dispel this idea that if a lawyer just talks in the right way, it can make crimes appear or disappear?

The ham sandwich thing? Ask any attorney. Heck, ask any activist who thinks prosecutors selectively target his pet demographic. It's uncanny how a prosecutor having an "off" day can fail to get an indictment on an open-and-shut police misconduct case. Used to be the case. Now it's more correct to look at a prosecutor's pet demographic. Take, for example, any of the Antifa/BLM rioters.

The public wouldn't be shown the contents of classified documents so of course you wouldn't see anything classified

Right. This is why these things are so difficult to prosecute. There are circumstances where a judge is permitted to see the evidence and tell the jury something is "really important" but the jury is always free to ignore the judge's opinion. Even calling in "experts" is a problem. Generally, you need to produce evidence to the jury, which means you either need to get the jury of peers clearance or declassify it to show them how bad it is. Which defeats the purpose.

Lots of people on the right were furious about Comey's handling of Hillary Clinton's emails, but he was right in both saying Hillary had broken the law AND that no prosecutor would take the case. In order to prove she had classified information, they would have to make the classified information public.

...and making up what-ifs to justify something that resulted in an FBI raid while saying that if they were really illegal then there would have been an investigation, is really dumb. The FBI wouldn't raid a former president for no fucking reason.

Have you been sleep-walking through the last several years?

Sticking to the "well after Trump was found with the documents he can just say that he declassified them while in office with no paperwork or notice and therefore it's ok" is also incredibly suspicious too. It's just a bad argument solely created to let Trump get away without consequences.

You should put a little effort into this. Even so little effort as looking at Wiki would have disabused you of this notion. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13526

P.S. That's Obama's EO.

[hector13]

If you have evidence they outperform the best managed funds I’d be interested to see that.

Equally so, Pelosi isn’t making those transactions, her investor husband is. He founded a venture capital company in the early ‘70s - over a decade before Nancy was elected to congress, I might add - and I would postulate that having done it for almost half a century, he’d be quite good at it.

Contrast this with the investigations into four senators, 3 Republicans and a Democrat, over allegations of insider trading regarding trades they made following coronavirus briefings in 2020.

Like I say, your biases are plain to see but just really boring.

[Frumple]

Have you been sleep-walking through the last several years?

What are you even talking about, here? There's been exactly four other FBI actions of note against presidents or former presidents in living memory -- Nixon (duh), Regan (iran contra), Clinton (whitewater, mostly), and Bush (Plame). The only one of those that had "no fucking reason" was maybe clinton. The FBI doesn't have a history of messing with presidents for shits and giggles.

[Thorfinn]

Have you been sleep-walking through the last several years?

What are you even talking about, here? There's been exactly four other FBI actions of note against presidents or former presidents in living memory -- Nixon (duh), Regan (iran contra), Clinton (whitewater, mostly), and Bush (Plame). The only one of those that had "no fucking reason" was maybe clinton. The FBI doesn't have a history of messing with presidents for shits and giggles.

Oh, I was talking about the clear bias the FBI and most of the IC has been using to advance one political side.

But if we are talking presidents specifically, no one can deny that the FBI knowingly lied to the FISA court in order to spy on surveil both candidate Trump and President Trump. No one can deny they sat on the Hunter laptop, and even claimed it was Russian disinformation when it's now documented they knew it was Hunter's, and that what information they had checked turned out not to have anything to do with Russia.

[Thorfinn]

If you have evidence they outperform the best managed funds I’d be interested to see that.

Equally so, Pelosi isn’t making those transactions, her investor husband is. He founded a venture capital company in the early ‘70s - over a decade before Nancy was elected to congress, I might add - and I would postulate that having done it for almost half a century, he’d be quite good at it.

Contrast this with the investigations into four senators, 3 Republicans and a Democrat, over allegations of insider trading regarding trades they made following coronavirus briefings in 2020.

Like I say, your biases are plain to see but just really boring.

Just follow any of the links. There's no point in me copy/pasting from them. You aren't going to read it anyway, Mr. Boring Biases.

[hector13]

Yeah the FBI announcing two weeks before the 2016 election they were re-opening the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail server was clearly meant to enhance her chances of being elected.

In my search for Pelosi’s stock picks I also discovered that investors are doing what other folks in government are doing, but I imagine you forgot to mention that, rather than because it doesn’t fit into your narrative that only the Libs are corrupt.

[Thorfinn]

Yeah the FBI announcing two weeks before the 2016 election they were re-opening the investigation into Clinton’s e-mail server was clearly meant to enhance her chances of being elected.

In my search for Pelosi’s stock picks I also discovered that investors are doing what other folks in government are doing, but I imagine you forgot to mention that, rather than because it doesn’t fit into your narrative that only the Libs are corrupt.

Sort of. That was about Weiner's laptop which also held classified emails Huma Abedin should not have had. There was overlap, sure, but that's because Abedin was Hillary's deputy and traveling chief of staff.

Yeah, I figured you wouldn't read a damn thing I posted "because it doesn’t fit into your narrative". You genuinely did not notice that the links I gave were for the entire Congress, Republicans and Democrats?

[hector13]

I didn’t notice the links tbf.

Notably only presented after being challenged over presenting arch-Lib Pelosi as the poster child of the phenomena, but whatevs, sure, I’m the one arguing in bad faith here.

[nenjin]

Biden!

Er, no, Pelosi!

Er.....wait, Obama?

Damnit.....Clinton!

Countdown until we hit Jimmy Carter.

[Thorfinn]

Well, it's true I did cherry pick. Kind of like if I were talking exceptional basketball players, I'd include Michael Jordan, and exceptional golfers would include Tiger Woods.

Others have figured out their performance, and ranked them. I have not found any rankings that don't have her on the leaderboard. I didn't personally run the numbers on Pelosi's trades, in part because I can't, as I don't have access to the exact values of the trades, only ranges, and, that, frankly, I don't care. My portfolio is more interesting to me than hers is. And that's why I recommended those two links. I check each, often, looking at unusual trades, then looking at what kind of committee action happened that congresscritter was on, particularly closed sessions. I know some of them by name, but most I don't know either by name or by party. Of course by the time I analyze it, the hedge funds have already processed it and possibly traded on it, so the small investor like me is left with whatever crumbs.

If you took my Pelosi dig as partisan, meh, maybe, but it also says something that the partisan bits are what stuck out, when I've been taking potshots all around.