Thread by @ZimermanErik

Lots of folks excited today about the classified documents found at #Biden's think tank, so let us chime in.

Firstly, the response ought not to be that the FBI should raid Biden's home as well (for this), but that #Trump's should not have.

The right ought to be against the politicization of law enforcement and prosecution, as opposed to favoring its use against the left.

The right should want to return to a freer and more constitutional state, rather than a banana republic and police state where those in power

currently put those out of power in prison, as is the case in much of the world.

If the point is to show the double standard of the media, and the alarming & ruthless bias against conservatives which permeate the government bureaucracies, including the DOJ, then by all means.

To this end, the many comparing the classified document situations with Trump and Biden are in my view missing first the context, and secondly the largest difference between them.

Firstly, please note that "Classified" information is only a construct of a federal bureaucracy.

What exists for private citizens of the US, is a Gd given freedom of speech protected by the first amendment. Any document that folks create, can be shared with whom they please. If you want to determine the number of military bases in Russia by staring at Google maps for example

and author some statistics about it you can distribute that as you please. The "classification" of documents in the sense we are discussing here, is as the word suggests simply a set of "categorization" rules, internal to government employees.

If the US gov't authors a document, typically under the Executive branch, then it "owns" it as an entity rather than any individual employee who may come across it. It is prepared at the pleasure of and by command from the chief executive, the President.

This is why there are rules against those government employees distributing the information freely.
It is rather similar to secret or confidential information owned by a corporation, who institutes rules against its employees disseminating it to the public.
#ClassifiedDocuments

The entire "classified information" regime is virtually entirely composed of "Executive Orders", simply conjured into existence by Presidential decree. Famously, EO 13526 signed by Obama.

It is an order to Federal employees on the handling of government information.

It can be changed at will by any sitting President. This is why ultimately, it is a sitting President that literally decides if a government document is classified, to what extent, who may see it, and if the entire set of rules about it should be amended or scrapped altogether.

A few nitpicks aside, classification does not exist outside of Presidential decree. Classification of documents, & the very notion of their existence is only by command of the President. No one can classify documents, other than those the President has delegated the power to.

Not surprisingly, the current Obama issued EO 13526 delegates those powers, both for classification and declassification.
For example, certain department heads and the VP may classify certain information under their purview & #declassify ONLY those they classified to begin with.

When in doubt, appeals are settled by the President (the source of the power. And not the VP). So, in short, classification is a set of rules ordered by #POTUS, to ensure that only he, and those that he would prefer, have access to certain government information. That's it.

So to speak about a sitting President breaking rules with classified documents is an ever thinning proposition. The President decides that they are classified or not, decides who else he may wish to share them with, and moreover is free to declassify them at will.

That is if he doesn't just scrap the entire classified regime instead. He certainly can be careless with it, potentially unintentionally allowing foreign entities to obtain them. Depending, there you may get closer to something that may be illegal, but not on his decision if to

declassify, or with whom to share information, certainly not if with himself at his private home.

The sitting VP, moving classified marked material not to his private home, nor to a Presidential Library or national archive, but to an independent "think"-tank funded by various

parties is an entirely different matter altogether. The classified information rules exist specifically so that people other than the President, don't do whatever they want with this potentially sensitive information.

If POTUS gets shot, then the VP may assume this power, but

until he has, he legally has no more of a right to break the Executive Order rules than a janitor who works at the White House. And that is the biggest difference between the stories.

And I refer only to the existence of classified materials moved to where they ought not to be,

and not to what might be in them. Knowing the Bidens and the Democratic machine, it would not surprise me if they had to do with #Ukraine, or other improper activities and were purposely taken by Biden's people.

But if we are referring to classified documents in general only,

I would hope the #GOP could rise above the fray and act with the sobriety to know that if millions of folks vote in a President & his runningmate as VP, they may both get to see a whole lot of sensitive information, and even end up with some of it in their homes, libraries & even

think-tanks, and that it is not a party interested in seeing those that grace the highest offices of the republic behind bars on such grounds. If you don't want certain people to access top secret information, don't vote for them.

If the conservatives really take the high road

and not what the left dictates that means, it would go a long way to show the American people the difference between nobility and petty ruthlessness, between love of freedom and state tyranny, between love of the Constitutional Republic and need for political power at all costs.

That would help make the all too often bemoaned "polarization" actually refer to a stark difference in choice, and not merely a war of blue shirt fans vs red ones.

#BidenClassifiedDocuments #doublestandard #FBI #DOJ