Page 660 - Obstruction News Today

And he had no such intent. that is exactly what will be looked at by the special counsel. so that is sort of step one. if you cant show knowledge and intent, youre not in the criminal space at all. this may have been, you know, shoddy work, it may be inappropriate, but it is not a criminal matter. second, even if it were a criminal matter, you look at aggravating factors, so for instance, many people have focused on with respect to former president trump the obstruction of justice that was alleg...

Doesnt, hell claim disparate treatment and this will become trumps number one grievance. this will help him rally his loyal base, but it should not impact the department of justices decision on charging trump in the mar-a-lago documents. actually, christine, theres one way to look at it. if it does impact t it could make it a bit more likely that the department of justice charges trump for obstruction. it gets you up to 20 years in prison. that charge would show the public why the trump situatio...

The double standard is obvious and then the tons of questions that i think every american has. >> reporter: and look, for the justice department, the question for the attorney general is do you think that this is something that needs a special counsel because of the perception that has been created in part by the handling of this by the white house. just to make it clear, there is a big difference between this and the trump investigation where you had an obstruction according to the justice depa...

Serious issues at stake here with classified domcuments foun in unsecure spaces stemming from him time as vice president. but we also need to be clear that there are tremendous difference between what happened with former president trump and what is happening right now with president biden and that is if you look at the number of documents with president trump, were looking at hundreds of documents in this case we know that ten documents were found in that initial batch, several more in the seco...

Theyre trying to hold back information because of where we are in the political cycle. >> wondering, because i know youre doing reporting on this, paula. where does the other special counsel investigation, jack smith investigating trump and his mishandling of highly classified documents? >> we know hes been busy. two months into the job, there was a flurry of activity before christmas. they gathered a lot of evidence. there was another round of subpoenas to trump associates in recent weeks. they...

Months of back and forth and obstruction between the trump team, the national archives, and ultimately the fbi and doj. according to the affidavit that the fbi used to gain a warrant from the courts for searching mar-a-lago, the national archives sent a criminal referral in february, indicating that 15 boxes of records were taken from mar-a-lago. the fbi launched a criminal investigation and found in those boxes were, quote, 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 docu...

Speaking out before you know everything, right? the situation here is different in that it appears these documents were handled by aides or mishandled potentially by aides. biden may not know if theres more out there. it sounds like theyre doing a search. so right now the best strategy may be just to allow his surrogates to point out the differences. republicans certainly will liken this to the situation with donald trump, but its up to the presidents allies to point out that number one, this is...

Know chain of custody. when did he get them, why did he have them, who did he share them with, who else had access, and what is the relevancy to him after he retained them. >> john: and reaction to democrats. >> talk about the classified documents found in president bidens think tank. >> no evidence of deliberate intent or obstruction of justice as we see in the case of donald trump and mar-a-lago. >> you think it poses a national security threat? >> no. >> why not? >> i dont think so. >> do you...

Thinking about now, and an investigation would look for the factors that i talked about, woefulness, obstruction, the types of documents, who got to see them, why did other people get to see them if they did, and the question of who might need to be eight witnesses so far away from any of that to me right now. >> how does this complicate merrick garlands movements behind the scenes? a lot of people set on its face, the mar-a-lago documents case is a case where you have a clear cut indictment of ...

If indeed this is even the topic of discussion for merrick garland. >> i imagine one thing that could happen today is that he may announce hes apointing a special counsel. typically the process is for the attorney general himself to review a matter to determine whether a special counsel is merited. so i suppose this second round of documents at president bidens residence might call into question whether thats a line there. not every of possession of classified documents is a crime. its a violati...