A thorough comparison of the Trump classified documents case & the Biden classified documents case.

[DKW 86 7,423]

Two-Tiered Justice... From 2000...

IOW, there is most certainly a double standard in the federal govt and senior civilians are essentially never held to any account for any reason over any breech.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2000/03/18/us-inconsistent-when-secrets-are-loose/6a928f72-d79b-430d-9c0b-93c67af05568/

A former Justice Department official who handled such cases said the practice of not prosecuting civilians for security violations developed more than 20 years ago "so as not to embarrass [federal agencies or the White House] in the courtroom."

"No matter how gross the violation, there would be no prosecution if the agency took strong administrative action," such as removal from the job and loss of security clearances, the former official said.

There is almost no evidence any of that ever occurred.

Military personnel often are treated more severely. Jail sentences or stiff administrative penalties, such as demotions and discharges, are common for service members caught removing classified material without authorization.

"If I had top-secret information on my home computer" while on active duty, "I would be investigated by the criminal investigative division, I would lose my clearance forever, and if it were top-secret or above, as it was in the Deutch case, I cannot imagine not being court-martialed--with jail time," said retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, an author and military analyst.

Some people with knowledge of past civilian and military cases, many of which have never been made public, allege a pattern of unfairness.

"There is a double standard. The more senior you are, the less chance you pay a heavy penalty," said a former senior intelligence official. He recalled, for example, that a top Pentagon official during the Nixon administration was found to have committed serious violations, and "everyone just walked away from it."

Now, lets just get real here for a moment. What you are about to almost certainly hear from trump's defense team is going to be just this: The more senior you are, the LESS LIKELY you are to be prosecuted. So trump being prosecuted would seem to be a highly out-of-bounds area given that almost no one at his level has been prosecuted for these crimes for decades. It was known and admitted policy practiced for decades that senior people in Washington simply do not get prosecuted. I am clearly saying BS to this. Prosecute them all. Of course, the Biden sycophants here are going to claim this FOR BIDEN but not FOR trump. Can you see why more than half of America no longer trusts the DOJ any more?

"There's no accountability," agreed Melvin A. Goodman, a former senior CIA analyst and professor of international security at the National War College. "What Deutch did, that was pretty gross. Important people seem to get away with more than lesser people."

The Deutch affair particularly rankles Norman A. Germino, who lost his job at the National Security Agency seven years ago for taking home documents that he contends were completely innocuous, such as a map and a foreign vocabulary list.

"The security people at NSA don't distinguish between serious breaches of intelligence--something a spy would do--and inadvertent mistakes," said Germino, who now works as a case manager in Maryland's Division of Corrections. "Deutch, being the . . . top man in the intelligence community, probably had some serious stuff. My stuff, it was junk. And I never put it on a computer where people could access it."

For comparison purposes, a report on the Deutch affair by the CIA's inspector general also outlines a remarkably similar security breach that was punished more swiftly and firmly.

In November 1996, Fritz Ermarth, a CIA senior intelligence analyst, was found to have written a document with the highest level of classification on his home computer, which was used to visit Internet sites. As in Deutch's case, members of Ermarth's family had access to the computer.

Unlike in the Deutch case, the CIA general counsel's office promptly filed a "crimes report" with the Justice Department, alerting prosecutors that a crime may have been committed. Ermarth was demoted in rank and salary, given a letter of reprimand barring raises for two years, and suspended without pay for a month. After the suspension, Ermarth's clearances were restored, and he retired from the agency a year later.

One important difference in the cases is that Deutch had already left the CIA when his violation was discovered, and so he could not be demoted or docked in pay. On the other hand, as director of the CIA, he bore responsibility to lead by example.

"The director of central intelligence is the only person in the entire U.S. government whose job description says, 'You will protect sources and methods,' " said Mark M. Lowenthal, former deputy secretary of state for intelligence and staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "The fact that he was DCI really raises the standard--there's no excuse for it."

Wen Ho Lee's attorneys are expected to argue that he is a victim of selective prosecution, citing the Deutch case--and possibly others--in which no criminal charges were brought. The Justice Department contends that there is a vital difference between the two cases: Lee is accused of gathering and copying secret data that was not necessary to his work, allegedly with intent to harm the United States or to aid a foreign power. Deutch, on the other hand, was writing official memos as part of his job; although he used unsecured computers, there is no allegation that his intent was malevolent to the country.

It is impossible to know how often government employees take classified material home at night. Many agencies either do not compile, or refuse to release, statistics on security violations. But there are indications that the practice is far from rare. The State Department investigated 38 incidents last year, and Energy Department officials say security officers have looked into seven cases of unauthorized removal of sensitive information over the past 13 months.

The CIA has another, admittedly indirect, indicator: When employees seeking to transfer to the CIA from other government agencies are given polygraph examinations, a senior intelligence official said, a "significant" number admit that in their previous jobs they took classified material home without authorization.

 

Edited August 20, 2023 by DKW 86

[Didba 5,256]

😂

[DKW 86 7,423]

5 hours ago, Didba said:

😂

So the double standard is funny to you?

 

[AU9377 4,931]

On 8/19/2023 at 8:57 PM, DKW 86 said:

Timely return and jail time was part of every case I saw. I don't think you understand what we are talking about here. If you had classified docs outside of a SCIF, you are up to no good. End of discussion.

 

Classified documents are rarely classified to the degree that require only viewing them in a SCIF.  That is the point.

[AU9377 4,931]

On 8/19/2023 at 10:01 PM, Son of A Tiger said:

Do you honestly believe that the DOJ justice is fair in all the situations going on today?

I don't believe that prosecutions at any level are fair, if by fair we mean treat everyone the same.

I don't believe that the DOJ is targeting Donald Trump unfairly, if that is your question.  Remember, the DOJ is not prosecuting Trump in New York.  They decided not to prosecute him for the hush money payments to strippers and buying negative stories to kill them etc.  They prosecuted John Edwards for that very same thing a few years ago and lost at trial.

The facts are so drastically different that it is hard to argue fairness in the other DOJ matters.  It is also hard to argue fairness with regard to Hunter Biden and the David Weiss led investigation.  There is no doubt that had Donald Trump's Bill Barr led DOJ assumed the leadership roles in the DOJ and the investigation been into Don Jr, the last thing that Trump would have allowed is for a Biden appointed U.S. Attorney to continue the investigation.

The only reason Weiss, a lifelong Republican, has been demonized is due to his not charging HB with crimes without regard for his ability to prove those crimes.  Had he done that, he would be the apple of their eye.

Edited August 21, 2023 by AU9377

[Didba 5,256]

6 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

So the double standard is funny to you?

 

What?