Donald Trump has been charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information and faces a prison sentence of 10 years. So why has he been charged, while Biden, Pence, and Hillary Clinton haven't faced charges for mishandling classified information? The Washington Post has a good article that explains it.
TL;DR Trump is allegedly obstructing justice, while the others immediately cooperated with investigators.
Highlights from the article:
- The investigation into Trump began when he gave 15 boxes of papers to the National Archives and Records Administration, which discovered 197 classified documents in the boxes. However, the indictment does not charge Trump with the illegal retention of any of these documents.
- Trump is accused of hiding and keeping classified papers, conspiring to obstruct the investigation, and scheming to conceal the truth even from his own lawyer. These allegations involve moving boxes, hiding documents, and causing others to make false statements.
- The case against Trump focuses on what he did after the government sought to retrieve the documents, rather than the act of taking the documents initially.
- In the case of Hillary Clinton, her use of a personal email server for government business led to classified information being shared on a nonclassified server. However, the email chains were not classified documents in the traditional sense.
- The key difference between the Trump case and the Clinton case is Trump's alleged effort to obstruct justice, while there was no evidence of Clinton seeking to obstruct justice in the DOJ inspector general report.
- The investigation into Pence's handling of classified information was closed by the Justice Department. FBI agents found a small number of potentially sensitive documents at his Indiana home, but all materials were promptly turned over to authorities
Trump sycophants will never bring up these facts, choosing instead to conveniently avoid their savior's alleged obstruction and concealment.
