By Ashe O Washington 20th August : The FBI raid on the former US president Donald Trump’s Florida residence that led to “seizure of classified documents” and the earlier investigation into the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email accounts that contained classified information are two completely distinct issues with no connection to one another.Legal experts have different opinions.
When the FBI conducted an arrest warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate this week, federal authorities discovered 11 sets of documents that were classified as secret or confidential as per the property receipts of the search.
While questions pertaining to the investigation remain unansweredspecifically, how Trump himself was the subject of the investigation — legal experts all over the political spectrum were quick point out similarities, as well as differences, between the investigation of the former president’s house as well as the FBI’s inquiry into Hillary Clinton’s email accounts, media reports claim.
Both investigations are tied to the possible misuse of classified information by high-ranking officials at the most senior levels of government media reports claimed while stating that in the case of Hilary Clinton authorities were looking into the former secretary of state’s use of an email account she had set up to communicate with her staff.Some of correspondence was later discovered to contain sensitive information.
In the case of Donald Trump the probe is based on boxes of classified documents discovered in the former president’s Florida residence.
Alan Dershowitz, a renowned lawyer and professor emeritus of Harvard Law School, says that comparing the two investigations, and asking whether the law is used equally a good idea.
“Until (US Attorney General Merrick) Garland fully and specifically addresses the difficult questions regarding what appears to be a disparate use of regulations and procedures, ‘what do you think of the emails she sent out?’ will be a pertinent issue,” Dershowitz wrote in an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal.
Other experts have told NewsNation there are a number of stark legal differences in both cases.
“Whereas Hillary Clinton’s server for email never contained classified information that was properly marked in the numerous emails that were sent or received from unclassified email accounts of the government The documents in Donald Trump’s possession were classified and maintained those markings as of the time of their confiscation,” Bradley Moss, an attorney for national security based in Washington said in an email.
In reality the Mar-a-Lago warrant for search cited the possibility of a violation of an unrelated criminal statute to obstruction as being one of the motives for requesting the warrant.”My best assumption is that the Justice Department is looking at an additional crime of the law in the matter of the former president and Secretary Clinton,” said Jamil Jaffer, who is the executive director and founder of the National Security Institute at George Mason University.
In July of 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey announced the findings of the Clinton email investigation and concluded that Clinton’s ex-secretary of state had been “extremely negligent” in her handling of “very sensitive highly classified information” However, the investigation there was no evidence to suggest that Clinton “intended to infringe the laws that govern the management of classified information.”
Due to the lack of any evidence that was clear, Comey concluded that “no reasonable prosecutor” would pursue criminal charges in the circumstances and advised federal prosecutors against bringing criminal charges.Now, the issue of intent could be the most important differentiator between the two cases.
The investigation of Trump’s Florida home isn’t the latest news in the months-long investigation into the handling by the former president of documents from the government.In June one of Trump’s lawyers signed a statement affirming that all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago was returned, as per reports in the New York Times.
However, the FBI’s search last week, which uncovered 11 sets of documents classified as secret or confidential suggests that at the very the very least certain of the classified documents has not been returned.
ash/pgh
