Myrtle Beach, SC Every White House manages a calendar. The question is whether this one managed it past the point where the public could still see the officer, and the numbers are the place to start rather than the vibe. In three years this president has given fewer than a hundred interviews. Each of the … Continue reading When the White House kept press availability tightly limited, declined routine interviews, and ran a staff-managed schedule, was that ordinary modern presidency — or evidence that the public was no longer seeing the person who actually held the office?
Politics
Should classified-documents handling by former presidents and vice presidents be governed by one published standard after the Biden and Pence discoveries, or does the divergence in charging outcomes confirm that the documents file was never a neutral records policy?
Myrtle Beach, SC If the subject is records, the government should be able to publish the rule before it knows the name on the box. That was the standard I expected once classified material turned up not only at Mar-a-Lago but in a Wilmington garage and a house in Carmel, Indiana. And I spent this … Continue reading Should classified-documents handling by former presidents and vice presidents be governed by one published standard after the Biden and Pence discoveries, or does the divergence in charging outcomes confirm that the documents file was never a neutral records policy?
Did Special Counsel Hur’s description of Biden as an elderly man with a poor memory — while declining to charge — confirm a two-track standard for cognitive fitness in classified-documents cases, or was it an irrelevant aside in a declination memo?
Gastonia, NC An aside is a sentence you can cut without changing anything. This one cannot be cut, and the reason has nothing to do with the memo. Four days ago, on the evening the report came out, the President walked into the briefing room to rebut it. He said his memory was fine. He … Continue reading Did Special Counsel Hur’s description of Biden as an elderly man with a poor memory — while declining to charge — confirm a two-track standard for cognitive fitness in classified-documents cases, or was it an irrelevant aside in a declination memo?
Should federal courts intervene earlier to police venue in the documents and January 6 prosecutions, or is forum-shopping an accepted feature of American criminal practice that has only become a scandal because of the caption?
Myrtle Beach, SC Forum-shopping is a feature of ordinary criminal practice the way rain is a feature of a beach vacation. Everybody knows it happens, and that does not mean a hurricane is just weather. But before I make that argument I have to deal with something inconvenient, because I spent a week with the … Continue reading Should federal courts intervene earlier to police venue in the documents and January 6 prosecutions, or is forum-shopping an accepted feature of American criminal practice that has only become a scandal because of the caption?
Was the Fulton County racketeering indictment a conventional use of a state RICO statute against an alleged effort to overturn a certified result, or a county prosecutor’s attempt to nationalize a political dispute the voters were already going to retry?
Gastonia, NC The word doing the work in this indictment is "enterprise," and I want to start there because I spent two days last week finding out that the word does not mean what I assumed it meant. My assumption, and I suspect most people's, was that a racketeering statute reaches organizations whose business is … Continue reading Was the Fulton County racketeering indictment a conventional use of a state RICO statute against an alleged effort to overturn a certified result, or a county prosecutor’s attempt to nationalize a political dispute the voters were already going to retry?
Is the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment on a records theory that requires a federal-election overlay a legitimate local prosecution, or the first attempt to turn a misdemeanor records statute into a presidential disqualification device?
Gastonia, NC A legitimate local prosecution does not need a presidential campaign to explain why a check stub is a felony. That is what has bothered me since Tuesday, and reading the unsealed instrument three times has not made it go away. I read copy for a living, which means I spend my days hunting … Continue reading Is the Manhattan district attorney’s indictment on a records theory that requires a federal-election overlay a legitimate local prosecution, or the first attempt to turn a misdemeanor records statute into a presidential disqualification device?
Was the appointment of a special counsel on November 18 an insulation of the documents and January 6 files from electoral politics, or an admission that the Department could not be trusted to finish those files in daylight?
Gastonia, NC Insulation is what you call it when the referee leaves the field so the game can be honest. Admission is what you call it when the referee changes shirts because nobody believes the old one anymore. Last Friday looked more like the second thing, and the calendar tells you why. Trump announced his … Continue reading Was the appointment of a special counsel on November 18 an insulation of the documents and January 6 files from electoral politics, or an admission that the Department could not be trusted to finish those files in daylight?
Does the New York civil-fraud complaint filed last week against the Trump Organization belong in the same “accountability” story as the federal criminal files, or is it a state-law valuation fight being asked to do national political work?
Myrtle Beach, SC A civil case about how a building was described to a bank is not a cousin of a documents warrant merely because the caption contains the same surname. That is where I start, and last Wednesday's filing makes the point better than any argument I could construct. The complaint is brought under … Continue reading Does the New York civil-fraud complaint filed last week against the Trump Organization belong in the same “accountability” story as the federal criminal files, or is it a state-law valuation fight being asked to do national political work?
Did the August search of Mar-a-Lago — and the way information about it reached the public — strengthen public confidence that no one is above the law, or teach half the country that the law now arrives with a media package?
Myrtle Beach, SC Confidence is what you have when the same tool would be used on a man your side still likes. I want to test that standard against the actual sequence, because the sequence is more damning than the version most people are shouting, and it is damning in a different place than they … Continue reading Did the August search of Mar-a-Lago — and the way information about it reached the public — strengthen public confidence that no one is above the law, or teach half the country that the law now arrives with a media package?
Now that the National Archives has confirmed classified material among the returned boxes and referred the matter to the Justice Department, is that ordinary records enforcement, or the conversion of a Presidential Records Act dispute into a criminal predicate?
Gastonia, NC The Presidential Records Act was written as a retrieval statute, not as a tripwire. That distinction matters because institutions develop habits from the verbs they use. Archives collect. They inventory. They send letters. They argue over ownership, custody, classification, privilege, access, and whether the box on the truck belongs in one building or … Continue reading Now that the National Archives has confirmed classified material among the returned boxes and referred the matter to the Justice Department, is that ordinary records enforcement, or the conversion of a Presidential Records Act dispute into a criminal predicate?
