This sounds like POTUS is the new Roman Emperor of our times and he / she can sell the republic or interests of its subjects to anyone as he wishes, keeping all the benefits generated for his personal fortune and distributing all the mis-fortune / longer term effects to the wider population base...
Guess what there is a name for this game, "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses".
Let's be honest here, this calvinball only applies to one political party. The other can't wear a tan suit or forgive a small fraction of student loans.
Just because POTUS writes down classified information in his personal notes/papers does not mean the information is no longer classified. Yes, POTUS has the power to de-classify, but there's a way of doing that so everyone is aware that certain information is now public. Doing it on a whim as a CYA because someone wants to make their illegal decision legal only after it becoming publicly known it occurred is not the way of properly de-classifying something.
It looks like this stems from the Mar-a-lago raid in 2022. Did we ever find out what the president was actually squirreling away there that he wants to sell on eBay? I remember the leak at the time was that it was nuclear secrets, but I haven't really seen an update on it.
The results of that investigation were squashed by Judge Eileen Canon in Florida claiming the special prosecutor was not legal. Jack Smith has bent over backwards to not release information based on the court's decision to bar its release.
However, Trump's case against the BBC has become an interesting one. The judge overseeing this case recently stated that the BBC can call Jack as a witness potentially allowing an end run around Judge Canon's release of Jack's report.
to be honest, I wasn't even thinking in those terms. I didn't s/squash/quash/ in my head and use the wrong term. I literally was thinking the judge stomped all over the case. Is quash really the correct term here as you're implying?
I don't think being able to sell secrets on eBay is a bad thing. The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict *unathorized* access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit
What I don't understand how it's allowed is that money earned from such ebay sell would go to private pocket instead of the government
I feel like that latter point isn't accentuated enough
So national interest doesn't exist? It's all at the whim of a demented money grabber, just because a small majority of the voters (if there really was a majority) got riled up?
The king decides what national interest is, and in this case it is in the national interest for him to auction the government off into his own bank account.
Childlike wishful thinking. There is a disturbingly large number of people who think like this. And there are, as you might imagine, strong incentives for certain individuals and organizations to promote this kind of thinking. Look up Curtis Yarvin if you want to see some deeply disturbed promotion of these extremely dark, and fundamentally anti-American, ideas.
> The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict unathorized access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit
First of all -- what? The exact legal authority between the President and Congress here is murky, yes (see https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS21900). But it's completely ridiculous to claim that the only criterion for authorization is that someone thinks a person ought to be authorized.
This is unitary executive thinking, grounded in the principle that, because the president is the sole and chief authority and executor of the law, the president may do just about anything in that capacity. It's utter unconstitutional nonsense, no matter what our (openly compromised by lobbyists) Supreme Court justices say.
The latter point is "not accentuated enough" because it's secondary to the primary point, which supersedes it. No the president's whim is not the same as executing the federal laws created by Congress within the framework of the constitution. It a mind-bendingly anti-American, anti-Constitutional line of reasoning on display here.
We all know who Trump is. This behavior, from Trump, should shock no one by now. I'm equally upset with all those who enable him. Midterms are here, time to do the one thing we are still allowed to. Be certain, Trump will cry foul on the elections unless they go his way.
It's less about who is doing it rather than that a US president is doing it at all. Obviously, once you find the right person, things can change quickly. Finding the right person when the other two branches of government are controlled by the same party, you can speed run the end of democracy. This is the part that's really shameful to me more so than just a single megalomaniac POTUS. The fact Congress has just capitulated its duties while overtly corrupt members of SCOTUS flaunt jurisprudence is something I thought we'd never have to see.
Congress didn't capitulate, it facilitated by obstructing any resistance. And we all saw this coming with SCOTUS as far back as the Obama administration. It's certainly horrifying to see it play out, but we've seen the warning signs since the W Bush admin.
At a certain point we just have to consider them all participants in a single oligarchic conspiracy to overturn democracy. If we cannot get justice through the system then it will have to be done by the masses themselves.
In this day and age, 100% of all presidential acts need to be documented publicly. It's no longer enough to wave a piece of paper around and say "see, it has his signature." Random cabinet secretaries and white house staffers running papers through the autopen should be a capital crime and the only sentence should be hanging.
Is this really something that has been happening, or just some nonsense that has been thrown out to see what sticks? Yes, using the autopen should be limited to the mass signing of trivial correspondence like annual christmas cards or form letter responses to anything received from the citizens that used a stamp. Has there been any one seriously concerned about legislation or executive order type of documents being signed this way?
Grump will cry foul on anything, because that's what he does. Normally for someone at his point in life, this would be confined to yelling at nursing home staff for the food being too cold and having the wrong color skin. But unfortunately, there are way too many gullible fools in this country who felt validated by his crying.
"Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts".
Now, if there was any kind of consistency, there would be a ruling that the president's "personal" White House papers aren't above the law, but I expect another piece of legal Calvinball to happen again.
Ridiculous as it may be, I'm not sure the argument is incorrect under the law. The president is the ultimate classification authority. The only reason he was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents previously is because that was after he left office.
The American system of executive power needs a major rethink. For decades, Congress has given up more and more power to the executive under the assumption that the president will be a careful steward of those powers. This was a dumb decision at the time and it's made quite obvious now that an absolute cretin holds the office.
Unfortunately, I don't imagine we'll get that rethink. Instead, we'll just try to fix it by giving somebody else too much power and hoping they use it better.
The question is not around classification but of ownership and especially of the ownership of the documents after the president leaves office. The argument is that the documents generated during the presidency are the personal property of the president.
Congress created the laws which allow classification & declassification. The president is the authority over what gets classified, but should still be required to follow the procedures for doing so.
Declassifying documents is completely within Trump's purview, but surely selling classified documents runs afoul of the emoluments clause in Article II, Section 1.
How are they selling classified anything if he's already declassified them? According to Trump, he can declassify anything be declaring he declassified them.
This sounds like POTUS is the new Roman Emperor of our times and he / she can sell the republic or interests of its subjects to anyone as he wishes, keeping all the benefits generated for his personal fortune and distributing all the mis-fortune / longer term effects to the wider population base... Guess what there is a name for this game, "Privatize the profits and socialize the losses".
Let's be honest here, this calvinball only applies to one political party. The other can't wear a tan suit or forgive a small fraction of student loans.
Just because POTUS writes down classified information in his personal notes/papers does not mean the information is no longer classified. Yes, POTUS has the power to de-classify, but there's a way of doing that so everyone is aware that certain information is now public. Doing it on a whim as a CYA because someone wants to make their illegal decision legal only after it becoming publicly known it occurred is not the way of properly de-classifying something.
It looks like this stems from the Mar-a-lago raid in 2022. Did we ever find out what the president was actually squirreling away there that he wants to sell on eBay? I remember the leak at the time was that it was nuclear secrets, but I haven't really seen an update on it.
The results of that investigation were squashed by Judge Eileen Canon in Florida claiming the special prosecutor was not legal. Jack Smith has bent over backwards to not release information based on the court's decision to bar its release.
However, Trump's case against the BBC has become an interesting one. The judge overseeing this case recently stated that the BBC can call Jack as a witness potentially allowing an end run around Judge Canon's release of Jack's report.
Minor nit: in a legal context, the word is "quashed" - e.g., quashing a subpoena.
to be honest, I wasn't even thinking in those terms. I didn't s/squash/quash/ in my head and use the wrong term. I literally was thinking the judge stomped all over the case. Is quash really the correct term here as you're implying?
Your comment somehow got quashed.
Source article: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/16/presidential-record...
I don't think being able to sell secrets on eBay is a bad thing. The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict *unathorized* access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit
What I don't understand how it's allowed is that money earned from such ebay sell would go to private pocket instead of the government
I feel like that latter point isn't accentuated enough
So national interest doesn't exist? It's all at the whim of a demented money grabber, just because a small majority of the voters (if there really was a majority) got riled up?
The king decides what national interest is, and in this case it is in the national interest for him to auction the government off into his own bank account.
I know this isn’t an argument but when I read this my first thought was: How can a real person hold this opinion?
Childlike wishful thinking. There is a disturbingly large number of people who think like this. And there are, as you might imagine, strong incentives for certain individuals and organizations to promote this kind of thinking. Look up Curtis Yarvin if you want to see some deeply disturbed promotion of these extremely dark, and fundamentally anti-American, ideas.
> The point of secret classification isn't to restrict trusted people - but to restrict unathorized access. And highest person in chain of command naturally has full authority to do as he sees the situation fit
First of all -- what? The exact legal authority between the President and Congress here is murky, yes (see https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/RS21900). But it's completely ridiculous to claim that the only criterion for authorization is that someone thinks a person ought to be authorized.
This is unitary executive thinking, grounded in the principle that, because the president is the sole and chief authority and executor of the law, the president may do just about anything in that capacity. It's utter unconstitutional nonsense, no matter what our (openly compromised by lobbyists) Supreme Court justices say.
The latter point is "not accentuated enough" because it's secondary to the primary point, which supersedes it. No the president's whim is not the same as executing the federal laws created by Congress within the framework of the constitution. It a mind-bendingly anti-American, anti-Constitutional line of reasoning on display here.
We all know who Trump is. This behavior, from Trump, should shock no one by now. I'm equally upset with all those who enable him. Midterms are here, time to do the one thing we are still allowed to. Be certain, Trump will cry foul on the elections unless they go his way.
It's less about who is doing it rather than that a US president is doing it at all. Obviously, once you find the right person, things can change quickly. Finding the right person when the other two branches of government are controlled by the same party, you can speed run the end of democracy. This is the part that's really shameful to me more so than just a single megalomaniac POTUS. The fact Congress has just capitulated its duties while overtly corrupt members of SCOTUS flaunt jurisprudence is something I thought we'd never have to see.
Congress didn't capitulate, it facilitated by obstructing any resistance. And we all saw this coming with SCOTUS as far back as the Obama administration. It's certainly horrifying to see it play out, but we've seen the warning signs since the W Bush admin.
At a certain point we just have to consider them all participants in a single oligarchic conspiracy to overturn democracy. If we cannot get justice through the system then it will have to be done by the masses themselves.
It makes me happy every day that his clock is running out. Clocks. All the clocks running out.
But we need to do some serious rethink and work on curbing the power of the POTUS.
Nothing short of sending a few hundred cronies to prison, and the ones responsible for murder to the firing squad will curb that power.
And he can do a lot of damage until he is gone. He is too old to face any of the consequences he caused
In this day and age, 100% of all presidential acts need to be documented publicly. It's no longer enough to wave a piece of paper around and say "see, it has his signature." Random cabinet secretaries and white house staffers running papers through the autopen should be a capital crime and the only sentence should be hanging.
Is this really something that has been happening, or just some nonsense that has been thrown out to see what sticks? Yes, using the autopen should be limited to the mass signing of trivial correspondence like annual christmas cards or form letter responses to anything received from the citizens that used a stamp. Has there been any one seriously concerned about legislation or executive order type of documents being signed this way?
Grump will cry foul on anything, because that's what he does. Normally for someone at his point in life, this would be confined to yelling at nursing home staff for the food being too cold and having the wrong color skin. But unfortunately, there are way too many gullible fools in this country who felt validated by his crying.
Recall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States for a moment:
"Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts".
Now, if there was any kind of consistency, there would be a ruling that the president's "personal" White House papers aren't above the law, but I expect another piece of legal Calvinball to happen again.
Ridiculous as it may be, I'm not sure the argument is incorrect under the law. The president is the ultimate classification authority. The only reason he was prosecuted for mishandling classified documents previously is because that was after he left office.
The American system of executive power needs a major rethink. For decades, Congress has given up more and more power to the executive under the assumption that the president will be a careful steward of those powers. This was a dumb decision at the time and it's made quite obvious now that an absolute cretin holds the office.
Unfortunately, I don't imagine we'll get that rethink. Instead, we'll just try to fix it by giving somebody else too much power and hoping they use it better.
The question is not around classification but of ownership and especially of the ownership of the documents after the president leaves office. The argument is that the documents generated during the presidency are the personal property of the president.
Congress created the laws which allow classification & declassification. The president is the authority over what gets classified, but should still be required to follow the procedures for doing so.
Are those procedures described in law or were they created by the executive?
Declassifying documents is completely within Trump's purview, but surely selling classified documents runs afoul of the emoluments clause in Article II, Section 1.
It should, I agree, but in practice the enforcement mechanism no longer functions.
How are they selling classified anything if he's already declassified them? According to Trump, he can declassify anything be declaring he declassified them.