[acdha]

Trump is not above the law. At least some of the documents (nuclear secrets) are not ones that the president has the legal right to declassify – the statute specifically limits that process – so his only option would have been to pardon himself, but he didn’t even want to admit having done this at the time and likes to pretend that he’s innocent, so he didn’t.

[dukeofdoom]

Espionage Act doesn't apply to him. Your president is not a spy, lol.

The document about nuclear secrets he's alleged to be in possession of is the nuclear capability of a foreign country. It's an open secret that it's Israel that has nuclear weapons.

So you want to jail your former president, and leading candidate for 100 years over this document?

I think we both know it's not about that.

Suppose Trump has documents on the letter agencies committing crimes. And they want them back to destroy.

Should presidents be subjugated by them, than who really will be running the country?

[HyperSane]

"Espionage Act doesn't apply to him. "

Yes it does. Why wouldn't it? the US has presidents not Kings.

> Your president is not a spy

Then why was Trump acting like one?

> So you want to jail your former president,

Anyone else who handled classified docs the way he did would be in jail for a minimum of 10 years.

You really don't have a clue how the US government works.

[dukeofdoom]

The president is the head of the bureaucracy. He's the source authority. Classification is for his benefit, so that people under him don't disclose secret information. However as the source authority, he can disclose at will.

You don't have to take my word for it.

Here's a Lawyer going over all the legal and constitutionals problems with this indictment.

https://rumble.com/v2tn4ac-get-this-video-to-trump-barnes-br...

[_kbh_]

> The president is the head of the bureaucracy. He's the source authority. Classification is for his benefit, so that people under him don't disclose secret information. However as the source authority, he can disclose at will.

Its a shame that he admitted on tape that he didn't declassify or couldn't declassify the documents he took, and that he shouldn't be in possession of them.

[dukeofdoom]

I think you're being misinformed by an out of context quote.

“Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this,” Trump says at one point, according to the transcript. “This was done by the military and given to me.”

Specifically in that excerpt Trump is referencing information about Milley leaking secret information. In the full context, Trump was saying to that reporter that Milley was the leaking plans to attack Iran. This was the "secret information", given to Trump confirming this by the Military.

Trump is claiming that Milley was the one that was leaking classified information of "Trumps plans" to attack Iran. Trump had no such ambitions, but it was Milley that wanted such an attack to happen.

As president, it's part of his administration's record that he received that information from the Military. If he want to let the American Public know this information he has the constitutional authority to do so.

However, Milley has no authority to disclose secret military plans, and has committed a crime.

[_kbh_]

> As president, that doesn't mean that Trump can't disclose that.

But he cannot disclose at least a large amount of what he has been accused of leaking. This article from the American Bar Association[0] is a good primer on what can and cannot be declassified at whim and specifically these two parts are important to this discussion.

>> In all cases, however, a formal procedure is required so governmental agencies know with certainty what has been declassified and decisions memorialized. A federal appeals court in a 2020 Freedom of Information Act case, New York Times v. CIA, underscored that point: “Declassification cannot occur unless designated officials follow specified procedures,” the court said.

>> Some secrets, such as information related to nuclear weapons, are handled separately under a specific statutory scheme that Congress has adopted under the Atomic Energy Act. Those secrets cannot be automatically declassified by the president alone and require, by law, extensive consultation with executive branch agencies.

So it looks like regardless of if that quote is out of context that the President does not have the sole authority to declassify everything.

[0] - https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2...

[HyperSane]

Shocked by how many Trump Cultists are on Hacker News.

[acdha]

There’s been an intense, well-funded libertarianism outreach effort for decades and it’s been especially pronounced in the tech sector where relatively high wages and negotiating power let a lot of people tell themselves that they’re in the same group as their CEO, and should vote to give them a tax cut (surely I’ll need that, too!) and freedom from paying for externalities, etc. That meant voting for Republicans over the years and saying that the people they voted for probably wouldn’t really do all of the anti-liberty things they promised to do.

After doing that, for some it’s easier to support Trump than admit making so many mistakes for years. There’s an entire media empire devoted to supporting that decision.

[pessimizer]

Shocked by how easy it was to convince liberals that the Espionage Act was a wonderful thing. The ACLU was started to oppose it.

[HyperSane]

The world is a mean and dangerous place, with genteel civilization a very thin veneer on top. Top secret documents are usually classified as such because the information they contain would cause severe harm to the United States if leaked. Names of spies and design and operations of nuclear weapons are top secret. Leaking the names of spies would get them killed.