Your media lies to lie.
They lie to you because you want them to lie to lie.
And you keep tuning in.
Ka-Ching!
According to the federal grand jury
indictment filed on June 8, Trump took hundreds, likely even thousands of government documents from the White House, including more than 300 that contained prominent classification markings, and moved them to his homes at Mar-a-Lago and his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
Clinton was never accused of physically removing any documents from the White House or any other government location. Rather, the
accusation against Clinton was that she used a private email server to conduct government business and that some of the communications on the server, although not marked as classified (see “Documents containing classification markings” below), were judged in hindsight to contain classified information.
Trump’s removal of classified documents from the White House actually
resembles the conduct of then-National Security Advisor Sandy Berger more than it resembles anything Hillary Clinton did.
In 2005, Berger
pleaded guilty to criminal charges after taking copies of a highly classified report from a reading room at the National Archives. He said he took the documents so that he could review them in his office to prepare himself for testifying before a commission investigating the September 11 attacks, a fact that the Justice Department never disputed. He was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years of probation and community service.
While Berger, like Trump, illegally took classified documents out of secure government locations, Trump’s conduct was far worse. Trump’s removal of classified documents not only dwarfed Berger’s in scale but was also more sinister in context. Berger’s reason for taking the documents, while not a legal defense, was at least related to the performance of his official duties as national security advisor.
Not so Trump …
The FBI did not find a single document bearing classification markings on Clinton’s email server, much less documents marked as secret or top secret. Among the approximately 30,000 government emails on Clinton’s server, the FBI found only three documents that contained a lower-case “c” buried somewhere in the text, indicating that the documents contained “confidential” information, the lowest category of classification. Two of the three were later found to have been mistakenly marked in the first place. The FBI also found some 110 documents that they interpreted, in hindsight, contained unspecified classified “information,” although none contained any classification markings.
That’s it.
Trump is a whole different story. According to the indictment, Trump took over 300 documents bearing classification markings out of the White House and dumped them in a variety of unsecured locations at Mar-a-Lago, including his office, his bedroom, and a bathroom.
Or: Taking whataboutism seriously.
plus.thebulwark.com