No. of Recommendations: 3
You're forgetting this one: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1924
(a)Whoever, being an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the United States, and, by virtue of his office, employment, position, or contract, becomes possessed of documents or materials containing classified information of the United States, knowingly removes such documents or materials without authority and with the intent to retain such documents or materials at an unauthorized location shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for not more than five years, or both.
That's both Biden and Hillary!.I didn't forget it. I linked to it in my post.
It's neither Biden or Hillary.
The elements of the crime cited above are:
- becomes possessed of documents containing classified materials
- knowingly removes them without authority
- has the intent to retain them at an unauthorized location
Neither Biden nor Hillary meet the second or third element. The second element relates to
removal of the documents from where they are. Senators and Vice Presidents and Secretaries of State routinely travel as part of their official duties, and are (generally) allowed to take classified information out of their government offices and take it with them to work on in other locations. Just like Trump, there also doesn't appear to be anything that
proves that Biden (as opposed to a third party) was the one who actually removed the documents to bring them to his home/office or that he was aware that the documents contained classified information.
The third element requires the government to prove that their
intent was to retain the documents at an authorized location - but both Biden and Clinton asserted that they were genuinely unaware that classified information
remained in the locations it wasn't permitted to be. There's no evidence that Biden
intended the documents found in his home or office to be retained there, rather than returned when he was done with them.
If there was evidence that Biden or Clinton was guilty of violating Section 1924, then such evidence would also exist for Trump. I don't think it exists for any of them. You have to prove that the removal (not where they brought the documents) was unauthorized, and I don't think that can be established for any of them.
