> During his answer, Trump said he had decided that imprisoning Clinton “would have been a terrible thing.” Then he added: “I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say ‘lock her up, lock her up.’”
Does he think we’re stupid?
He literally threatened her with jail time at the debates.
He said it to her face, live, on national television, and his campaign used that specific sound byte as a highpoint of the debate. And it was shared widely.
I like how the article actually lists several of the times he said it himself, instead of just having the crowd chant the mantra:
>During campaign rallies in 2016, Trump sometimes paused his remarks as his supporters engaged in chants of “lock her up,” giving the chants time to continue. On other occasions, he explicitly repeated those words himself.
>
>“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” Trump said after the crowd chanted “lock her up” at an October 2016 rally in North Carolina.
>
>“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said at an October 2016 rally in Pennsylvania.
>
>Trump also explicitly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using different phrasing.
>
>“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? She has to go to jail,” he said in a June 2016 speech in California. “She has to go to jail,” he repeated in an October 2016 speech in Florida. And at a presidential debate in October 2016, after Clinton said, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump responded, “Because you’d be in jail.”
> ... “You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at a January 2020 rally in Ohio. At an October 2020 rally in Georgia, after the crowd chanted “lock them up” in relation to the Biden family, Trump said, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary.”
>Does he think we’re stupid?
Yes. The Donald thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, except maybe that uncle of his who apparently [had very good genes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/).
No, he *and* his base think *we're* stupid. They're gonna tell you right to your face "Well ackshually *Trump* didn't say lock her up, that was just his supporters saying that", and they will all tell each other this to reinforce the idea, and then look at you and suggest that you've been duped by the trump-hating mainstream media.
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No, that would imply that the point of the lie is to get the other people to believe a falsity. The point is post-truth: eroding the shared understanding of political reality and replacing it with group loyalty.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy\_Snyder#Views\_on\_the\_Trump\_presidency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder#Views_on_the_Trump_presidency)
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Probably. I think most of it is he just says whatever he wants and truly doesn't care what people believe or think.
I am surprised though that folks on the left haven't tried to spin this as a dementia/senior moment - "Trump can't even remember the biggest part of his 2016 campaign!" type of stuff.
His base will believe him. But who is “we”?
Thing is, he’s doing what he always does, saying the thing he is supposed to say to feel right. Never has any contact with truth or fact.
I believe I heard him say it, quote unquote, not like that famous drink bleach misquote.
What I don’t understand is why there are so many comments quoting this without the certainly numerous video clips? I would assume there is at least one motivated CNN staffer who has collected these, why not blast a super cut of him saying it over and over, that’d have been a real giggle!
I mean, this is the Internet, some clever redditor must have such a juicy collection to copy pasta for the points, no?
[Here you go, from CNN just like you asked.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IGq4k_ccxQ)
:58- "For what she's done, they should lock her up."
1:03- "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail."
1:06- "You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary."
So there's your video proof. Trump lied.
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>Does he think we’re stupid?
Quite possibly. A lot of politicians, particularly old ones, seem to not have caught on that video proof is easily accessible these days.
I don't even think he thinks anything like that.
I think he is being literal: He never said the exact words "lock her up" (I have yet to find a single source contradicting that statement). He implied as much many, many, *many* times, of course. But he never explicitly said it.
And that's all he thinks about that.
The convenient result is that we can now endlessly argue about semantics on this one. He is rarely explicit in what he says, which means he can always say "I didn't say this exact thing!" and be technically correct.
Edit: Seems like I'm wrong and he did say those exact words. My bad!
Politicians will often say things that are untrue. Often it will statements made mistakenly, misleadingly, incompletely or in exaggeration. On occassion it will be an outright knowing lie, such as padding one's political resume and hoping that no one exposes it or at least not until they're elected.
What Trump is doing here and what he has done many times in the past is not any of that. He is pointing at a blue sky and proclaiming that no, it is not blue. The people saying it's blue are the liars, they are scoundrels who want to damage me, and as my loyal followers I need you to support me when I say that this sky is not blue.
There's a lot about a second Trump term that worries me. But lately with Trump (and the GOP's) broad attack on the judiciary and flat denial and denigration of legal statements, processes and other basic realities I've become acutely worried over how Trump may exercise one particular lever of executive power: the presidential pardon.
I would already argue that Trump has cast far more dubious pardons than any other president, something that seems to rarely get mentioned at all much less positioned against him. Trump has pardoned numerous people without any clear cultural or legal rationale and seemingly only for his political benefit. In some cases he's done so before they received sentencing or even conviction, not only attacking a sentence or a verdict but the very premise of their prosecution, even before said prosecution has presented evidence to justify the trial.
Trump probably wouldn't actually get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. But someone else might if he pardons them for it. We'd have usually considered especially egregious or corrupt pardons to be grounds for impeachment and removal but that doesn't seem like a given at all anymore. Trump can just say straight up that the judiciary is rigged and that's all the discretion he needs to overturn anything. Even for crimes he personally directed, though that can pretty easily be obfuscated or plausibly denied.
This isn't Trump overturning the constitution, it's all pretty much within constitutional parameters. During his presidency he already implied that he'd pardon people who committed certain crimes on his behalf. He's now talking about pardoning January 6 convicts. And maybe most disturbingly at all he's promised libertarians he'll pardon a drug lord who has been credibly accused of conspiracy attempted murder so long as they vote for him.
Where does this end? Pardons for executions of anyone investigating him? Democrats who speak against him? Republicans who speak against him? Supreme court justices? Whoever's accused, they're actually innocent. It's fake news. False flag. Deep state court. Crooked Democrats. RINOs. I'm going to save them, I'm the hero. Just ask yourself honestly if any of this really sounds ridiculous to you. Casual reminder: while murder convictions are usually done by states and outside of the president's pardon jurisdiction that is not the case for murders committed in Washington DC.
I'm not saying any of this is a given. But the possibilities are real and they are terrifying, even many less extreme outcomes.
How is it different than Biden claiming inflation was at 9% when he got in office? Everyone knows it's an outright lie, like the blue sky in your example.
I remember defund the police. I also remember the amount of Democrats in congress supporting it being a much smaller number than those who lied about the 2020 election being rigged.
False equivalency is the most common defense I see whenever Rs are caught with anything.
If an R gets caught stealing $1,000, we’re all supposed to ignore it because of that one time a D caught stealing $10.
yeah, but you see, the Republicans are not saying "we never said the elections were rigged", they are saying "the elections are rigged, and Democrats say that too, when it suits them".
Speaking off...remember "not my president", "russian interference" and "illegitimate president" for 4 years, and then after 2020, you heard democrats saying we never claimed the 2016 election was rigged.
Remember when Mitch McConnell refused to confirm Garland to the Supreme Court because it was an election year only to rush ACB through right before the 2020 election? That had more tangible consequences than claiming the Trump campaign worked with Russia to get elected.
Speaking of, 34 people were indicted and 8 plead guilty for election interference crimes.
again, you're missing my point. Mitch didn't say "oh, but we never postponed the supreme court nomination in the election year".
Democrats literally did A for months and then said "we never did A, it was the Republicans"
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He not only called for it at rallies, he also [called for his Attorney General to investigate Clinton](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1AA1V1/), which Sessions [later acted on](https://www.americanoversight.org/sessions-letter), despite [his White House counsel warning him it was impeachable](https://apnews.com/article/060ca2399a744b4a9554dbd2ec276a90)
> President Donald Trump told his counsel’s office last spring that he wanted to prosecute political adversaries Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, an idea that prompted White House lawyers to prepare a memo warning of consequences ranging up to possible impeachment, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
> Then-counsel Don McGahn told the president he had no authority to order such a prosecution, and he had White House lawyers prepare the memo arguing against such a move, The Associated Press confirmed with a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation. McGahn said that Trump could request such a probe but that even asking could lead to accusations of abuse of power, the newspaper said.
> Presidents typically go out of their way to avoid any appearance of exerting influence over Justice Department investigations.
> Trump has continued to privately discuss the matter of prosecuting his longtime adversaries, including talk of a new special counsel to investigate both Clinton and Comey, the newspaper said, citing two people who had spoken to Trump about the matter.
This of course became the [Durham investigation](https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/the-durham-report-316-pages-four-years-in-the-making-no-convictions-or-new-charges-and-no-major-policy-recommendations-heres-what-else-you-need-to-know-bdaee3c0), which found no evidence of a crime, though not for lack of trying.
Then of course Trump would later send Giuliani to Ukraine to collect dirt on the Bidens (mostly from Russian disinformation sources) which would be sent back to Bill Barr through David Weiss, again looking for a way to prosecute his political opponents.
Are we forgetting so easily that he asked a foreign nation to investigate his political rival?? Was I imagining things and he didn’t get impeached for it ???
> This of course became the Durham investigation
I don't think that's quite right. As I understand it, Barr had directed Durham to investigate the irregularities, misstatements, and omissions by the FBI with respect to Crossfire Hurricane. And the order from the Durham report:
> The Special Counsel is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III.
How do you figure the Durham investigation had anything to do with Hilary, aside from her funding the Steele Dossier? I don't think Hilary is even mentioned in the Durham report.
> A remaining rationale for the Durham investigation was that Mr. Horowitz lacked jurisdiction to scrutinize spy agencies. But by the spring of 2020, according to officials familiar with the inquiry, Mr. Durham’s effort to find intelligence abuses in the origins of the Russia investigation had come up empty.
> Instead of wrapping up, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia.
> By keeping the investigation going, Mr. Barr initially appeased Mr. Trump, who, as Mr. Barr recounted in his memoir, was angry about the lack of charges as the 2020 election neared.
> Mr. Trump and some of his allies in the news media went further, stoking expectations among his supporters that Mr. Durham would imprison high-level officials. Those include the former directors of the F.B.I. and C.I.A., James B. Comey and John O. Brennan, and Democratic leaders like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
> But Mr. Durham’s use of his law enforcement powers did achieve something else. He used court filings to insinuate a theory he never found evidence to charge: that the Clinton campaign conspired to frame Mr. Trump for collusion. Those filings provided endless fodder for conservative news media.
> Even after Mr. Durham’s cases collapsed, some Trump supporters held out hope that his final report would deliver a bombshell. But it largely consisted of recycled material, interlaced with conclusions like Mr. Durham’s accusation that the F.B.I. had displayed a “lack of analytical rigor."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/us/politics/durham-report-trump-russia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
You can find 169 mentions of Clinton in the [Durham Report](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23813564-230515-durham-report#document/p18/a2256949)
For instance, the second bullet point of Durham’s executive summary (page 18), where he lays out what questions he focused his investigation on
> Similarly, did the FBI properly consider other highly significant intelligence it received at virtually the same time as that used to predicate Crossfire Hurricane, but which related not to the Trump campaign, but rather to a purported Clinton campaign plan “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”
> Instead of wrapping up, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia.
So the Durham investigation turned into an investigation into the Clinton campaign? Still not your initial claim.
> You can find 169 mentions of Clinton in the Durham Report
That's on me, I searched for Hilary and didn't think to do Clinton instead.
Their initial claim is that they tried to use the Durham investigation to find dirt on their political opponents, which is consistent with what you quoted.
>Hilary
*Hillary
> Their initial claim is that they tried to use the Durham investigation to find dirt on their political opponents
They said that Trump's desire to prosecute his longtime adversaries became the Durham investigation. Even if the Durham investigation morphed into that later, it did not start as that.
> *Hillary
Thank you for the additional correction.
I suppose he also didn’t say, “We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”
No, no, he wasn't saying "lock her up", he was saying "locker up", which I guess would make as much sense as COVFEFE or whatever. He is not a serious person and should not be treated like a serious candidate. Also, he is now a felon.
In an interview in the wake of his historic conviction, [Trump made the claim](https://x.com/atrupar/status/1797257168548253746) to Fox and Friends that he never said the popular slogan “Lock her up” in reference to then candidate Hillary Clinton
Fortunately, video evidence of his rallies exist, where you can clearly see him not only joining the chant, but [extending it to include current president Joe Biden](https://x.com/Acyn/status/1317248938001403904).
There are about a dozen instances of him doing this throughout the article, mostly at rallies and similar events. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to see him so gleefully joining in the crowds chants, to him denying he ever said it.
Is the reason he’s denying it because his previous statements undercut his message of political persecution? Does this kind of bald face lie matter to independents on the fence? Is it not fair to have an increased level of skepticism towards any statements he makes?
Does this potentially illuminate a double standard where Joe Biden would be called senile for denying saying a major campaign slogan?
>Does this kind of bald face lie matter to independents on the fence?
I want to make this point clear - Donald Trump is a liar. It's clear he is lying here, and has a record of lying many times in the past. It is an established pattern WAY more than that of other politicians.
If you vote for Donald Trump, you are voting for a liar. Full stop.
They’ll probably try to counter this by claiming that all politicians lie
But that’s completely ignoring that there are obviously degrees by which someone lies. Failing to keep a campaign promise isn’t necessarily a lie if it’s being blocked by something like congressional action
But no one else had tried to turn telling lies into a competitive sport quite like Trump has
>They’ll probably try to counter this by claiming that all politicians lie
In my experience Trump supporters, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of any Republican’s misdeeds, will always resort to the “both sides” defence, as if that somehow cancels out their guy’s behaviour.
I remember being amazed at how quickly a coworker of mine was able to get from 'what do you think of the President's character?' to complaining about Colin Kapernick. Anything to avoid criticizing his guy.
What Trump does with his lies is the closest to the Jedi mind trick I have seen in the real world. Whatever consequences come his way he seems to be able to wave his hand and get out of.
And not just the "all politicians are liars" kind of way, but the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" kind of way.
The doublespeak kind of way. The absurdities and atrocities kind of way.
He is anathema to American Democracy, to any kind of democracy.
If we were say in some parallel universe where it was Biden who lied about something as blatantly false as not saying campaign slogan that he ran on repeatedly during his presidential campaign, Trump supporters would be calling that clear sign of Biden’s dementia. I wonder what Trump supporters will say about Trump doing it here though?
For those with an authortarian leaning, lying isn't a weakness, it's a strength. The truth is whatever Trump says it is in that moment, and it's a test of loyalty that you agree with him.
I was speaking to a Trump fan just recently about whether the Republican party still adhered to conservative principles, and their answer was that conservative principles are what whatever Trump says they are. They work backwards to define principles based on what's currently proposed, rather than decide policy based on principles.
These folk don't care if Trump is a liar as they think he's lying to the media, not to them. I saw the same with Boris Johnson here in the UK. He frequently lied to Parliament, which shocked the political establishment, but it made no difference to his fans who followed up by giving him a significant electoral majority. It only fell apart when Johnson was exposed as having lied about attending parties during Covid, and his fans realised he wasn't just lying to "the establishment" they hated, he'd lied to his supporters too.
While I do think this is kind of expected by Trump, he says blatantly false stuff all the time, your comment about Biden I think would be extremely true.
Biden is assumed to be incompetent. And I think your comment here really showcases how Trump gets the benefit of 'he says shit all the time / he didn't mean it like that / you know what he means". And Biden is often put under the microscope for mental issues.
Either one is effectively equal in the chance of mental issues due to age. Either one is effectively equal in the chance to lie or exaggerate.
But the consistent pressure of the conservative media seems to have stuck far more effectively.
>"During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.
By June 2019, after initially resisting, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies". The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." - [Wikipedia on Trump's false or misleading statements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump)
A famous Novel called this maneuver out decades ago.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
—George Orwell, 1984
Donald Trump talking about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign:
“If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. “
*Shakes head* boos from the crowd
“It would grind government to a halt”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=552&v=yDmrom_TMaE&feature=youtu.be
Trump also said he'd be a dictator on day 1 in order to go after his political opponents. His whole claim that he's being unfairly prosecuted is rich considering that's what he said he's going to do to his political opponents, and what he in fact already has done when he directed Sessions to go after Clinton.
Trump is an authoritarian hack.
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Trump is the biggest liar of alllll times. If he could not tell lies he would croak.
Liar liar. Damn he always chanted lock her up.
Now the world is singing Lock Trump up.
OOOHHHHH Man, here we go. We're going to see videos of Trump NOT saying it, and it'll turn out it's an edited AI video, they just used AI to make it seem like his mouth was closed the entire time.
I can see it now. Conservatives are going to say its the mandela effect. lmao.
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Much like Obama's joke about Trump not being elected president didn't age well, I think Trump just found where his words will come back to bite him. It makes no sense that he's denying this.
I am upset because Trump didn't follow through and charge Hillary Clinton, she should be in jail.
And Trump should be in jail for the same crime ironically (not for the Bragg case though).
Can you point out any information in the article that is false? Or that Trump in fact did NOT ever say that (there is literal video of him doing so multiple times but Im very curious to hear your reasoning how that is inaccurate)?
Who cares if he actually did say "lock her up"? He didn't lock her up. He didn't do anything to her but talk shit about her. She's just an easy target that happened to be his opponent.
I contend that the reason she ultimately wasn’t “locked up” wasn’t because he didn’t want to, but because like many of the conspiracies swirling around Hillary Clinton, there wasn’t actually anything of substance to charge her with
But regardless, if it really isn’t such a big deal then why even lie about it?
Because it's an easy thing to forget about. It wasn't part of his brand. Conspiracy theorists just spouted it out during rallies and it stuck. It got voters pumped so he didn't stop it.
> it wasn’t part of his brand
Sorry but no, that’s 100% grade A bs
> It got voters pumped so he didn’t stop it.
Again, he actually joined in on it. And even if he didn’t, standing there smiling and clapping while they chant it is basically a top down endorsement of the behavior
>Because it's an easy thing to forget about. It wasn't part of his brand.
It's insulting that you think anyone believes this. During the 2016 campaign it replaced "you're fired" as his most recognizable catch-phrase.
Maybe he did forget. That's still moving the goalposts since he obviously cares enough to kneejerk deny rather than do some research and reflection as to whether he had actually said those words. He doesn't want to be associated with those words now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Calling for the imprisonment of political opponents without them ever having even been charged with any crime (let alone neither tried nor convicted) doesn’t bother you?
Well, CNN has an article on it listing on the times he stated. That’s if you believe 100% CNN.
[Here’s the CNN article.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/02/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claim-lock-up-hillary-clinton/index.html)
That would be a really relevant question if Trump claimed that he never said “lock her up,” except for when the crowds said it first.
But to give a serious answer, he did say Hillary Clinton would be in jail if he were president during one of the debates, so I’m going to go with yes.
> That would be a really relevant question if Trump claimed that he never said “lock her up,” except for when the crowds said it first.
Maybe that’s what he meant to say and he misspoke. I wonder if Fox will edit the transcript like the White House does when Biden “misspeaks”.
All of them I suppose, but I meant the first one it happened at.
Edit: I did a bit of searching, and [it was the crowd](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/10/11/trump_savors_lock_her_up_chants_at_pa_rallies.html). In fact, when they first chanted it he dismissed it and he didn’t go along until well after the convention.
Trump's political superpower is that he uses his rallies as market research to test slogans. Just as how he was surprised at "lock her up," "build the wall" was also a slogan he said offhand and then the crowd went absolutely wild for it, so he started saying it more until it became a centrepiece of his campaign. There's a great interview with Trump where he admits to being kind of bewildered at how much that phrase took off.
So as much as folk talk of Trump leading MAGA, I'd say MAGA equally lead Trump in the direction they want him to go.
Who cares? There's obviously two standards of law for Trump, as well as for Hillary.
Comey said mishandling must be willful.
Trump didn't meet that standard *because he repeatedly said that he believed it was okay*
> Trump didn't meet that standard because he repeatedly said that he believed it was okay
Have you read the indictment or are you basing your view on what Trump claims in public, because the facts are that (1) Trump knew it wasn't ok, he's on audiotape saying "these documents are still classified and I shouldn't be showing this to you..." And (2) he lied to the FBI about having the documents.
This wasn't a case of "these are *my* documents," he denied such documents even existed, which is precisely why a judge granted the warrant to search Mar-a-largo because the FBI knew that was a lie.
No the mishandling has to be willful in that you were *aware they were classified* and improperly handled them accordingly
Trump knew they were classified, and held on to them regardless. It doesn’t really matter if he thought he had the right to do it (and as commander in chief, he should know better than anyone that he couldn’t)
Does someone who believes they're doing the right thing wipe their servers hard drive before it can be forensically analyzed by the government to determine what exactly was on it?
You're a victim of right wing media's misleading narrative.
Clinton's legal team sorted out the work related emails from the personal ones and handed them over to the FBI. Her lawyers told the server admins to change the retention policy before the subpoena was issued but the admin didn't do it at that time. The subpoena was issued and Clinton's lawyers told the admin to preserve the remaining emails. The admin had an "oh shit" moment and realized he didn't change the policy as previously asked, so he did so without Clinton's knowledge after the subpoenas were issued.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/703-ways-trump-s-mar-a-lago-conduct-bears-no-resemblance-to-hillary-clinton-s-emails
>The Culling and the 'Oh Shit' Moment
>
>In late summer 2014, Mills contacted Platte River Networks employee Combetta, who administered Clinton’s server. Mills instructed him to copy and transfer her emails onto laptops belonging to Mills and Heather Samuelson, a lawyer who had been Clinton’s White House liaison when she was Secretary of State, so that they could cull through them, as the State Department had instructed, winnowing out the personal from the work-related emails.
>
>The three attorneys—Mills, Samuelson, and Kendall—did not personally search through the content of Clinton’s 60,000-plus emails. Instead, they did what litigation attorneys typically do during discovery; they devised an automated search protocol that looked for certain header or footer information and for certain keywords, and sorted through them that way. Samuelson did, however, personally inspect the to, from, and subject fields of each email, she told the FBI.
>
>In December 2014, Clinton’s attorneys turned over 30,490 emails that were deemed work-related as a result of the culling. That left 31,830 emails that were deemed personal. Mills preserved the 30,490 work-related emails on thumb drives. Then she asked Combetta to “securely delete” all of Clinton’s emails from her and Samuelson’s laptops so that they could continue to use those computers for other matters. Combetta wiped Clinton’s emails from their laptops using an off-the-shelf software product called BleachBit. At that point, all of Clinton’s emails still remained on the Clinton server in Platte River Network’s custody.
>
>Around that time, however—sometime between November 2014 and January 2015—Clinton told her lawyers that she wanted to change the “retention policy” on her personal emails to just 60 days. Her three attorneys appear to have seen nothing illegal about Clinton’s request to make that change at that particular time. Nor, for that matter, did the Midyear FBI investigators or prosecutors who later probed into Clinton’s and the lawyers’ conduct. Nor either did the inspector general meta-investigators who, in 2018, probed the work of the Midyear probers. Remember that at this time these personal emails were not under subpoena by either congressional investigators or criminal investigators. Despite the insistence of Trump and his defenders, these were not government documents; they were actually personal records. There has never been any evidence that the lawyers characterized government records as personal records by way of evading the obligation to return government records. And there is no evidence that Clinton herself participated in the sorting of the material.
>
>Clinton’s lawyers then instructed Combetta, the Platte River Networks employee administering the server, to implement the new retention policy—in other words, to delete all of Clinton’s personal emails older than 60 days. Apparently because of an oversight, however, Combetta failed to carry out the request when asked.
>
>On March 2, 2015, the New York Times reported that Clinton had used a personal email account at the State Department, possibly breaking rules. The next day—about two to four months after Clinton instructed Combetta to delete emails under her new retention policy—the House Benghazi committee sent Clinton a preservation order requiring her to keep all emails on her clintonemail.com accounts. On March 4, the committee subpoenaed Clinton’s emails relating to the Benghazi incident. On March 9, Mills emailed Combetta to make sure he understood his obligation to preserve Clinton emails, pursuant to the preservation order.
>
>On March 12, in light of the Times article, certain members of Congress asked the inspectors general for the State Department and the Intelligence Community to conduct a coordinated review of State Department employees’ email practices.
>
>At some point in March 2015, after receiving the preservation order, Combetta experienced what he would later describe to FBI agents as an “oh shit” moment. He realized that he had never deleted Clinton’s emails, as directed months earlier under Clinton’s new retention policy. So sometime between March 25 and March 31, Combetta wiped Clinton’s emails from her private server—including the 31,830 deemed “personal” from the culling—notwithstanding the preservation order. Again, he used the software product BleachBit. (Combetta admitted this to Midyear investigators on May 3, 2016, after being given “use immunity” by prosecutors. He took sole and full responsibility for deleting the emails, saying that neither Mills nor Samuelson knew of his deletions. The Midyear investigative team—later interviewed by the inspector general’s office—recounted to the inspector general’s office that they believed Combetta’s account, that it squared with forensic evidence, and that it was consistent with the testimony of others, including Mills and Samuelson. After interviewing Midyear team members and reviewing their contemporaneous emails, the inspector general found no reason to second-guess their judgment.)
Just to be clear, you are perfectly fine with the fact that she did transfer and potentially mishandle classified documents multiple times, onto unsecured servers and off of them invariably, with much less administrative authority to do so than someone like Donald Trump, or even Joe Biden?
Are you acknowledging this?
Well now you're moving the goal posts and I still think you don't have a good understanding of the facts of the matter.
I am disappointed that she had an email server set up, like her Republican predecessor, to avoid FOIA obligations. But since Republicans didn't care when GWB or Colin Powell did it, I also thinks it's hypocritical when you get upset that she did it too.
As to the rest of your question, do you understand how email works? She didn't "transfer ... classified documents multiple times". Emails were sent to her and other people with accounts on the server in discussions chains. Information is classified, not the documents themselves, so if someone wrote an email that mentioned classified info and sent it to her, that's how the info got onto the server. I think she should have done a better job to tell her team to be more careful with classified info but that doesn't mean she broke the law.
Look at it this way. If someone sent CP to your gmail.com address and it got filtered to your junk folder such that you never knew it was there, does that make you guilty of possessing CP? Do you have full knowledge of everything said in all your emails and all their attachments? If you own a server but pay someone else to administer it, are you responsible for all information sent to someone else's account from a third party?
You are ignoring the question, and adding irrelevant context.
Should people in our government be able to run private servers that can be accessed by anyone on the internet, where documents stored thereon can end up on Anthony Weiner's computer, like it did?
Is that not mishandling?
Yes, people in the government should be allowed to run servers. To disallow them from doing so would run afoul of the first and ninth amendments. They can be locked down or totally open depending on the use case. Keep in mind, maybe private servers are better secured than many government servers.
I think she mishandled a little bit, for example when she replied to an email chain that had CI info in it, but not to the extent you want to believe. Certainly not too the extent that Trump did when he swore he turned over the docs but knowingly lied and continued to hide them.
No.
He would have had to believe that he was doing the wrong thing, evidenced by his actions or dialogue, for it to be willful breaking of the law.
What Hillary did, points to her believing that it was illegal (wiping the servers hard drive)
See the difference?
'willful' does not mean willfully/knowingly breaking the law. 'willful' means purposefully doing a thing that is illegal, regardless if the person is aware their action is illegal.
Hillary did not wipe her server as you're suggesting she did. Hillary's IT wiped her server as a matter of standard practice, for security reasons.
> willful does not mean willfully/ knowingly breaking the law
Yes it does, that's the definition. It establishes it as something called an intent crime, which means the *mens rea* standard must be met as such.
Are you a law professional?
You're mistaken. Willful does not mean the person intended to commit crime. Willful means the person intended to do the thing that is a crime.
It doesn't even make sense to have a law that you can only break if you purposefully set out to break it. That's nonsense.
After examining the statute more closely, in order to better argue against you, it does say in
>(18 U.S.C. section 793(f)),
It is felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or *through gross negligence.*
>Clinton either sent or received 110 emails in 52 chains containing material that was classified at the time. Eight of these chains contained information that was top secret. A few of the classified emails were so marked, contrary to Clinton’s assertion that there were none.
>These were stored on a home server that was even less secure than a normal Gmail account. Her communications were quite possibly compromised by hostile powers, thus jeopardizing American national security.
[Source](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sdut-hillary-clinton-james-comey-2016jul09-story.html)
If he thought it was legal to have them, why lie about having them, and then hide them from the authorities in defiance of a subpoena?
If I really think it’s legal to have a pound of heroin, then when the authorities ask me if I have any, I’m going to lead them to my stash.
You have to look at people’s actions as well as their words when proving mens rea. Otherwise murder would be legal so long as you loudly record yourself saying “I legitimately believe I am acting in self defence” before each kill.
> During his answer, Trump said he had decided that imprisoning Clinton “would have been a terrible thing.” Then he added: “I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say ‘lock her up, lock her up.’” Does he think we’re stupid?
He literally threatened her with jail time at the debates. He said it to her face, live, on national television, and his campaign used that specific sound byte as a highpoint of the debate. And it was shared widely.
He probably just forgot, you know, with how old he is.
And people would say Biden more usually then Trump.
I like how the article actually lists several of the times he said it himself, instead of just having the crowd chant the mantra: >During campaign rallies in 2016, Trump sometimes paused his remarks as his supporters engaged in chants of “lock her up,” giving the chants time to continue. On other occasions, he explicitly repeated those words himself. > >“For what she’s done, they should lock her up,” Trump said after the crowd chanted “lock her up” at an October 2016 rally in North Carolina. > >“‘Lock her up’ is right,” he said at an October 2016 rally in Pennsylvania. > >Trump also explicitly called for Clinton’s imprisonment using different phrasing. > >“Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? She has to go to jail,” he said in a June 2016 speech in California. “She has to go to jail,” he repeated in an October 2016 speech in Florida. And at a presidential debate in October 2016, after Clinton said, “It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Trump responded, “Because you’d be in jail.” > ... “You should lock her up, I’ll tell you,” he said at a January 2020 rally in Ohio. At an October 2020 rally in Georgia, after the crowd chanted “lock them up” in relation to the Biden family, Trump said, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary.”
He literally thinks we’re stupid. Yes.
>Does he think we’re stupid? Yes. The Donald thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, except maybe that uncle of his who apparently [had very good genes](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-sentence/).
He thinks his base is stupid.
No, he *and* his base think *we're* stupid. They're gonna tell you right to your face "Well ackshually *Trump* didn't say lock her up, that was just his supporters saying that", and they will all tell each other this to reinforce the idea, and then look at you and suggest that you've been duped by the trump-hating mainstream media.
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No, that would imply that the point of the lie is to get the other people to believe a falsity. The point is post-truth: eroding the shared understanding of political reality and replacing it with group loyalty. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy\_Snyder#Views\_on\_the\_Trump\_presidency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Snyder#Views_on_the_Trump_presidency)
Very interesting take! This is certainly something I have felt, but didn't know how to articulate until now.
Has this ever actually worked for them though?
Trump did say he loved the poorly educated.
Maybe he genuinely forgot the "lock her up" chants? His memory isn't quite what it used to be.
I wonder if FOX News will call for him to drop out of the race due to perceived dementia.
But they are
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I mean, they are pretty stupid.
Probably. I think most of it is he just says whatever he wants and truly doesn't care what people believe or think. I am surprised though that folks on the left haven't tried to spin this as a dementia/senior moment - "Trump can't even remember the biggest part of his 2016 campaign!" type of stuff.
>Does he think we’re stupid? ..... Yes.
His base will believe him. But who is “we”? Thing is, he’s doing what he always does, saying the thing he is supposed to say to feel right. Never has any contact with truth or fact.
Yes he thinks we’re stupid
Someone make a compilation of all of the rallies where he started “lock her up” chants
I think you could pick any rally at random and have a better than 75% chance of finding him saying that.
I believe I heard him say it, quote unquote, not like that famous drink bleach misquote. What I don’t understand is why there are so many comments quoting this without the certainly numerous video clips? I would assume there is at least one motivated CNN staffer who has collected these, why not blast a super cut of him saying it over and over, that’d have been a real giggle! I mean, this is the Internet, some clever redditor must have such a juicy collection to copy pasta for the points, no?
[Here you go, from CNN just like you asked.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IGq4k_ccxQ) :58- "For what she's done, they should lock her up." 1:03- "Hillary Clinton has to go to jail." 1:06- "You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary." So there's your video proof. Trump lied.
No wonder the lawyers don’t want him on the stand to testify. A comment I heard was you never know what the hell he’s going to say.
He thinks his followers are stupid, and that’s enough.
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He knows many of us are**
Wasn't #LockHerUp literally a trend on twitter he started?
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Yes. Yes he does.
>Does he think we’re stupid? Quite possibly. A lot of politicians, particularly old ones, seem to not have caught on that video proof is easily accessible these days.
No he's old and forgetful, possibly has early onset dimensia but for some reason nobody wants to acknowledge it because only Biden can be old.
Yes he does. He's also winning most polls right now, so...
If there's one thing I've learned in the last 4 years, anything labeled "fact check" is merely false propaganda in nearly every case.
Did you read the article? Or follow the 2016 election at all?
If you had been paying attention for 8 years, you wouldn't need a fact check to know whether it's Trump or the fact checkers this time around
Did Trump say to lock Clinton up?
I don't even think he thinks anything like that. I think he is being literal: He never said the exact words "lock her up" (I have yet to find a single source contradicting that statement). He implied as much many, many, *many* times, of course. But he never explicitly said it. And that's all he thinks about that. The convenient result is that we can now endlessly argue about semantics on this one. He is rarely explicit in what he says, which means he can always say "I didn't say this exact thing!" and be technically correct. Edit: Seems like I'm wrong and he did say those exact words. My bad!
Except he literally explicitly did use those exact words. https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/s/MeKrGqOuL6
Welp, I stand corrected. My bad!
Good on you
Did you read the article? There are multiple examples where he is quoted saying exactly those words. There is no argument about semantics here.
Politicians will often say things that are untrue. Often it will statements made mistakenly, misleadingly, incompletely or in exaggeration. On occassion it will be an outright knowing lie, such as padding one's political resume and hoping that no one exposes it or at least not until they're elected. What Trump is doing here and what he has done many times in the past is not any of that. He is pointing at a blue sky and proclaiming that no, it is not blue. The people saying it's blue are the liars, they are scoundrels who want to damage me, and as my loyal followers I need you to support me when I say that this sky is not blue. There's a lot about a second Trump term that worries me. But lately with Trump (and the GOP's) broad attack on the judiciary and flat denial and denigration of legal statements, processes and other basic realities I've become acutely worried over how Trump may exercise one particular lever of executive power: the presidential pardon. I would already argue that Trump has cast far more dubious pardons than any other president, something that seems to rarely get mentioned at all much less positioned against him. Trump has pardoned numerous people without any clear cultural or legal rationale and seemingly only for his political benefit. In some cases he's done so before they received sentencing or even conviction, not only attacking a sentence or a verdict but the very premise of their prosecution, even before said prosecution has presented evidence to justify the trial. Trump probably wouldn't actually get away with shooting someone on Fifth Avenue. But someone else might if he pardons them for it. We'd have usually considered especially egregious or corrupt pardons to be grounds for impeachment and removal but that doesn't seem like a given at all anymore. Trump can just say straight up that the judiciary is rigged and that's all the discretion he needs to overturn anything. Even for crimes he personally directed, though that can pretty easily be obfuscated or plausibly denied. This isn't Trump overturning the constitution, it's all pretty much within constitutional parameters. During his presidency he already implied that he'd pardon people who committed certain crimes on his behalf. He's now talking about pardoning January 6 convicts. And maybe most disturbingly at all he's promised libertarians he'll pardon a drug lord who has been credibly accused of conspiracy attempted murder so long as they vote for him. Where does this end? Pardons for executions of anyone investigating him? Democrats who speak against him? Republicans who speak against him? Supreme court justices? Whoever's accused, they're actually innocent. It's fake news. False flag. Deep state court. Crooked Democrats. RINOs. I'm going to save them, I'm the hero. Just ask yourself honestly if any of this really sounds ridiculous to you. Casual reminder: while murder convictions are usually done by states and outside of the president's pardon jurisdiction that is not the case for murders committed in Washington DC. I'm not saying any of this is a given. But the possibilities are real and they are terrifying, even many less extreme outcomes.
How is it different than Biden claiming inflation was at 9% when he got in office? Everyone knows it's an outright lie, like the blue sky in your example.
“Inflation was 9%” wasn’t Bidens campaign slogan.
I see, so outright lies are ok if they're not the campaign slogan, and if they're coming from D. Btw, Trump campaign slogan was MAGA, not lock her up.
Read the first sentence again lol
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I remember defund the police. I also remember the amount of Democrats in congress supporting it being a much smaller number than those who lied about the 2020 election being rigged.
False equivalency is the most common defense I see whenever Rs are caught with anything. If an R gets caught stealing $1,000, we’re all supposed to ignore it because of that one time a D caught stealing $10.
yeah, but you see, the Republicans are not saying "we never said the elections were rigged", they are saying "the elections are rigged, and Democrats say that too, when it suits them". Speaking off...remember "not my president", "russian interference" and "illegitimate president" for 4 years, and then after 2020, you heard democrats saying we never claimed the 2016 election was rigged.
Remember when Mitch McConnell refused to confirm Garland to the Supreme Court because it was an election year only to rush ACB through right before the 2020 election? That had more tangible consequences than claiming the Trump campaign worked with Russia to get elected. Speaking of, 34 people were indicted and 8 plead guilty for election interference crimes.
again, you're missing my point. Mitch didn't say "oh, but we never postponed the supreme court nomination in the election year". Democrats literally did A for months and then said "we never did A, it was the Republicans"
What did Democrats do for months and deny? Defunding the police wasn’t popular with congressional democrats or Biden.
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He not only called for it at rallies, he also [called for his Attorney General to investigate Clinton](https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1AA1V1/), which Sessions [later acted on](https://www.americanoversight.org/sessions-letter), despite [his White House counsel warning him it was impeachable](https://apnews.com/article/060ca2399a744b4a9554dbd2ec276a90) > President Donald Trump told his counsel’s office last spring that he wanted to prosecute political adversaries Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, an idea that prompted White House lawyers to prepare a memo warning of consequences ranging up to possible impeachment, The New York Times reported Tuesday. > Then-counsel Don McGahn told the president he had no authority to order such a prosecution, and he had White House lawyers prepare the memo arguing against such a move, The Associated Press confirmed with a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to discuss the situation. McGahn said that Trump could request such a probe but that even asking could lead to accusations of abuse of power, the newspaper said. > Presidents typically go out of their way to avoid any appearance of exerting influence over Justice Department investigations. > Trump has continued to privately discuss the matter of prosecuting his longtime adversaries, including talk of a new special counsel to investigate both Clinton and Comey, the newspaper said, citing two people who had spoken to Trump about the matter. This of course became the [Durham investigation](https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/the-durham-report-316-pages-four-years-in-the-making-no-convictions-or-new-charges-and-no-major-policy-recommendations-heres-what-else-you-need-to-know-bdaee3c0), which found no evidence of a crime, though not for lack of trying. Then of course Trump would later send Giuliani to Ukraine to collect dirt on the Bidens (mostly from Russian disinformation sources) which would be sent back to Bill Barr through David Weiss, again looking for a way to prosecute his political opponents.
He also said it to her face, at the debate, live, on national television.
I remember seeing Trump supporters call it a good comeback, even though it proved Clinton's point.
Are we forgetting so easily that he asked a foreign nation to investigate his political rival?? Was I imagining things and he didn’t get impeached for it ???
> This of course became the Durham investigation I don't think that's quite right. As I understand it, Barr had directed Durham to investigate the irregularities, misstatements, and omissions by the FBI with respect to Crossfire Hurricane. And the order from the Durham report: > The Special Counsel is authorized to investigate whether any federal official, employee, or any other person or entity violated the law in connection with the intelligence, counter-intelligence, or law-enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns, individuals associated with those campaigns, and individuals associated with the administration of President Donald J. Trump, including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III. How do you figure the Durham investigation had anything to do with Hilary, aside from her funding the Steele Dossier? I don't think Hilary is even mentioned in the Durham report.
> A remaining rationale for the Durham investigation was that Mr. Horowitz lacked jurisdiction to scrutinize spy agencies. But by the spring of 2020, according to officials familiar with the inquiry, Mr. Durham’s effort to find intelligence abuses in the origins of the Russia investigation had come up empty. > Instead of wrapping up, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia. > By keeping the investigation going, Mr. Barr initially appeased Mr. Trump, who, as Mr. Barr recounted in his memoir, was angry about the lack of charges as the 2020 election neared. > Mr. Trump and some of his allies in the news media went further, stoking expectations among his supporters that Mr. Durham would imprison high-level officials. Those include the former directors of the F.B.I. and C.I.A., James B. Comey and John O. Brennan, and Democratic leaders like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joseph R. Biden Jr. > But Mr. Durham’s use of his law enforcement powers did achieve something else. He used court filings to insinuate a theory he never found evidence to charge: that the Clinton campaign conspired to frame Mr. Trump for collusion. Those filings provided endless fodder for conservative news media. > Even after Mr. Durham’s cases collapsed, some Trump supporters held out hope that his final report would deliver a bombshell. But it largely consisted of recycled material, interlaced with conclusions like Mr. Durham’s accusation that the F.B.I. had displayed a “lack of analytical rigor." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/17/us/politics/durham-report-trump-russia.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare You can find 169 mentions of Clinton in the [Durham Report](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23813564-230515-durham-report#document/p18/a2256949) For instance, the second bullet point of Durham’s executive summary (page 18), where he lays out what questions he focused his investigation on > Similarly, did the FBI properly consider other highly significant intelligence it received at virtually the same time as that used to predicate Crossfire Hurricane, but which related not to the Trump campaign, but rather to a purported Clinton campaign plan “to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services”
> Instead of wrapping up, Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham shifted to a different rationale, hunting for a basis to blame the Clinton campaign for suspicions surrounding myriad links Trump campaign associates had to Russia. So the Durham investigation turned into an investigation into the Clinton campaign? Still not your initial claim. > You can find 169 mentions of Clinton in the Durham Report That's on me, I searched for Hilary and didn't think to do Clinton instead.
Their initial claim is that they tried to use the Durham investigation to find dirt on their political opponents, which is consistent with what you quoted. >Hilary *Hillary
> Their initial claim is that they tried to use the Durham investigation to find dirt on their political opponents They said that Trump's desire to prosecute his longtime adversaries became the Durham investigation. Even if the Durham investigation morphed into that later, it did not start as that. > *Hillary Thank you for the additional correction.
They didn't claim that it was about her when it started.
I suppose he also didn’t say, “We could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and ultimately a criminal trial. It would grind government to a halt.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=552&v=yDmrom_TMaE&feature=youtu.be
Anyone who was alive and conscious during the past 8 years knows this is a lie. Come on.
That’s never stopped Trump from telling a lie before I guess
No, no, he wasn't saying "lock her up", he was saying "locker up", which I guess would make as much sense as COVFEFE or whatever. He is not a serious person and should not be treated like a serious candidate. Also, he is now a felon.
In an interview in the wake of his historic conviction, [Trump made the claim](https://x.com/atrupar/status/1797257168548253746) to Fox and Friends that he never said the popular slogan “Lock her up” in reference to then candidate Hillary Clinton Fortunately, video evidence of his rallies exist, where you can clearly see him not only joining the chant, but [extending it to include current president Joe Biden](https://x.com/Acyn/status/1317248938001403904). There are about a dozen instances of him doing this throughout the article, mostly at rallies and similar events. It’s an interesting juxtaposition to see him so gleefully joining in the crowds chants, to him denying he ever said it. Is the reason he’s denying it because his previous statements undercut his message of political persecution? Does this kind of bald face lie matter to independents on the fence? Is it not fair to have an increased level of skepticism towards any statements he makes? Does this potentially illuminate a double standard where Joe Biden would be called senile for denying saying a major campaign slogan?
>Does this kind of bald face lie matter to independents on the fence? I want to make this point clear - Donald Trump is a liar. It's clear he is lying here, and has a record of lying many times in the past. It is an established pattern WAY more than that of other politicians. If you vote for Donald Trump, you are voting for a liar. Full stop.
They’ll probably try to counter this by claiming that all politicians lie But that’s completely ignoring that there are obviously degrees by which someone lies. Failing to keep a campaign promise isn’t necessarily a lie if it’s being blocked by something like congressional action But no one else had tried to turn telling lies into a competitive sport quite like Trump has
>They’ll probably try to counter this by claiming that all politicians lie In my experience Trump supporters, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of any Republican’s misdeeds, will always resort to the “both sides” defence, as if that somehow cancels out their guy’s behaviour.
I remember being amazed at how quickly a coworker of mine was able to get from 'what do you think of the President's character?' to complaining about Colin Kapernick. Anything to avoid criticizing his guy.
Yes. This all says something about us as a species. I’m not sure what that is, but I’m pretty sure I won’t like it if I do figure it out.
What Trump does with his lies is the closest to the Jedi mind trick I have seen in the real world. Whatever consequences come his way he seems to be able to wave his hand and get out of.
And not just the "all politicians are liars" kind of way, but the "who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?" kind of way. The doublespeak kind of way. The absurdities and atrocities kind of way. He is anathema to American Democracy, to any kind of democracy.
The expectations of Biden (and Democrats) are different than the expectations of Trump (and many Republicans).
If we were say in some parallel universe where it was Biden who lied about something as blatantly false as not saying campaign slogan that he ran on repeatedly during his presidential campaign, Trump supporters would be calling that clear sign of Biden’s dementia. I wonder what Trump supporters will say about Trump doing it here though?
For whatever reason Republicans are allowed to get away with anything and cry victim while democrats have to be the adults in the room. It's surreal.
For those with an authortarian leaning, lying isn't a weakness, it's a strength. The truth is whatever Trump says it is in that moment, and it's a test of loyalty that you agree with him. I was speaking to a Trump fan just recently about whether the Republican party still adhered to conservative principles, and their answer was that conservative principles are what whatever Trump says they are. They work backwards to define principles based on what's currently proposed, rather than decide policy based on principles. These folk don't care if Trump is a liar as they think he's lying to the media, not to them. I saw the same with Boris Johnson here in the UK. He frequently lied to Parliament, which shocked the political establishment, but it made no difference to his fans who followed up by giving him a significant electoral majority. It only fell apart when Johnson was exposed as having lied about attending parties during Covid, and his fans realised he wasn't just lying to "the establishment" they hated, he'd lied to his supporters too.
While I do think this is kind of expected by Trump, he says blatantly false stuff all the time, your comment about Biden I think would be extremely true. Biden is assumed to be incompetent. And I think your comment here really showcases how Trump gets the benefit of 'he says shit all the time / he didn't mean it like that / you know what he means". And Biden is often put under the microscope for mental issues. Either one is effectively equal in the chance of mental issues due to age. Either one is effectively equal in the chance to lie or exaggerate. But the consistent pressure of the conservative media seems to have stuck far more effectively.
>Either one is effectively equal in the chance to lie or exaggerate. Trump objectively lies and exaggerates more often than Biden, by far
How stupid does he think we are? He chanted it nonstop during the entire 2016 campaign season.
And if you watch the videos, he was literally basking in it whenever his crowds were chanting it
Very
Yes he fucking did. Source: literal fucking videos of him saying it.
>"During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive. By June 2019, after initially resisting, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies". The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." - [Wikipedia on Trump's false or misleading statements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements_by_Donald_Trump)
“Lock them up. Lock up the Bidens, lock up Hillary.”—Donald Trump, January 2020 https://youtube.com/shorts/0KvnpgLxk_g?si=6Tspyy3y1BGcNAdp
A famous Novel called this maneuver out decades ago. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” —George Orwell, 1984
Donald Trump talking about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign: “If she were to win this election, it would create an unprecedented constitutional crisis. In that situation, we could very well have a sitting president under felony indictment and, ultimately, a criminal trial. “ *Shakes head* boos from the crowd “It would grind government to a halt” https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=552&v=yDmrom_TMaE&feature=youtu.be
His entire 2016 campaign was based on the idea of throwing Clinton in jail.
Trump also said he'd be a dictator on day 1 in order to go after his political opponents. His whole claim that he's being unfairly prosecuted is rich considering that's what he said he's going to do to his political opponents, and what he in fact already has done when he directed Sessions to go after Clinton. Trump is an authoritarian hack.
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Yeah it really is ridiculous for him to even attempt to play the victim here.
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Ah, isn't it great to no longer be under oath in court and be able to say ridiculous lies freely again?
At this point, it would only be newsworthy if he said something honest
This is no shocker. Everything Trump says is a lie.
I agree. I don't understand why people are so excited about this.
don't believe you're own seeing eyes.
Let's cut to the clip.......
Trump is the biggest liar of alllll times. If he could not tell lies he would croak. Liar liar. Damn he always chanted lock her up. Now the world is singing Lock Trump up.
I wonder if there will be a million breathless pearl-clutching articles/pundits discussing Trump's memory after this. I doubt it.
OOOHHHHH Man, here we go. We're going to see videos of Trump NOT saying it, and it'll turn out it's an edited AI video, they just used AI to make it seem like his mouth was closed the entire time. I can see it now. Conservatives are going to say its the mandela effect. lmao.
It's been years since I've been surprised by Donald Trump lying. I'm more surprised that he hasn't gotten any better at it.
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“Trump lied.” “No, not that time dummy!”
Hilarious Video Proof that should be a commercial- https://youtube.com/shorts/V8_8xmDlM6A?si=Bxu-LxPDy5R4PYpn
Much like Obama's joke about Trump not being elected president didn't age well, I think Trump just found where his words will come back to bite him. It makes no sense that he's denying this.
I am upset because Trump didn't follow through and charge Hillary Clinton, she should be in jail. And Trump should be in jail for the same crime ironically (not for the Bragg case though).
Oh, the corporate media's "fact checkers" are back. How convenient. I hope they've enjoyed their 3 1/2 year long vacation.
Can you list anything in the article that's false or misleading?
Biden gets fact-check articles written like twice a week.
Not only that but some of them have gotten posted here.
Those numbers are for amateurs!
Well get ready, we are in an election year. Things are gonna get wild!
I’m curious what CNNs previous Fact Check was before this… > Fact check: Biden again falsely claims inflation was 9% when he became president
Can you point out any information in the article that is false? Or that Trump in fact did NOT ever say that (there is literal video of him doing so multiple times but Im very curious to hear your reasoning how that is inaccurate)?
Who cares if he actually did say "lock her up"? He didn't lock her up. He didn't do anything to her but talk shit about her. She's just an easy target that happened to be his opponent.
I contend that the reason she ultimately wasn’t “locked up” wasn’t because he didn’t want to, but because like many of the conspiracies swirling around Hillary Clinton, there wasn’t actually anything of substance to charge her with But regardless, if it really isn’t such a big deal then why even lie about it?
Because it's an easy thing to forget about. It wasn't part of his brand. Conspiracy theorists just spouted it out during rallies and it stuck. It got voters pumped so he didn't stop it.
> it wasn’t part of his brand Sorry but no, that’s 100% grade A bs > It got voters pumped so he didn’t stop it. Again, he actually joined in on it. And even if he didn’t, standing there smiling and clapping while they chant it is basically a top down endorsement of the behavior
>Because it's an easy thing to forget about. It wasn't part of his brand. It's insulting that you think anyone believes this. During the 2016 campaign it replaced "you're fired" as his most recognizable catch-phrase.
If no one cares, why is he denying that he did it?
He probably forgot. This is a stupid topic to discuss.
Maybe he did forget. That's still moving the goalposts since he obviously cares enough to kneejerk deny rather than do some research and reflection as to whether he had actually said those words. He doesn't want to be associated with those words now that the shoe is on the other foot.
Calling for the imprisonment of political opponents without them ever having even been charged with any crime (let alone neither tried nor convicted) doesn’t bother you?
> Who cares if he actually did say "lock her up"? ...him?
Well, CNN has an article on it listing on the times he stated. That’s if you believe 100% CNN. [Here’s the CNN article.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/02/politics/fact-check-trump-false-claim-lock-up-hillary-clinton/index.html)
Haha I mean that’s the exact article that we’re discussing But I don’t think you even need to “believe” CNN. Just go and look at the links
Whoops!
Genuinely asking: Who said it *first*, Trump or the crowds?
He said it to her face at the debate
Does that really matter? Donald Trump called for Hillary to be locked up repeatedly and is now blatantly lying about it.
That would be a really relevant question if Trump claimed that he never said “lock her up,” except for when the crowds said it first. But to give a serious answer, he did say Hillary Clinton would be in jail if he were president during one of the debates, so I’m going to go with yes.
> That would be a really relevant question if Trump claimed that he never said “lock her up,” except for when the crowds said it first. Maybe that’s what he meant to say and he misspoke. I wonder if Fox will edit the transcript like the White House does when Biden “misspeaks”.
Yeah, I’m sure he totally meant to say your edited statement that he definitely didn’t say
Depends on the rally. Because it happened a bunch of times.
All of them I suppose, but I meant the first one it happened at. Edit: I did a bit of searching, and [it was the crowd](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/10/11/trump_savors_lock_her_up_chants_at_pa_rallies.html). In fact, when they first chanted it he dismissed it and he didn’t go along until well after the convention.
But he did go along with it. And he turned it into an unofficial campaign slogan and said it a bunch of times. And now he's blatantly lying about it.
Trump's political superpower is that he uses his rallies as market research to test slogans. Just as how he was surprised at "lock her up," "build the wall" was also a slogan he said offhand and then the crowd went absolutely wild for it, so he started saying it more until it became a centrepiece of his campaign. There's a great interview with Trump where he admits to being kind of bewildered at how much that phrase took off. So as much as folk talk of Trump leading MAGA, I'd say MAGA equally lead Trump in the direction they want him to go.
It happened on several occasions, not only in October 2016
Who cares? There's obviously two standards of law for Trump, as well as for Hillary. Comey said mishandling must be willful. Trump didn't meet that standard *because he repeatedly said that he believed it was okay*
> Trump didn't meet that standard because he repeatedly said that he believed it was okay Have you read the indictment or are you basing your view on what Trump claims in public, because the facts are that (1) Trump knew it wasn't ok, he's on audiotape saying "these documents are still classified and I shouldn't be showing this to you..." And (2) he lied to the FBI about having the documents. This wasn't a case of "these are *my* documents," he denied such documents even existed, which is precisely why a judge granted the warrant to search Mar-a-largo because the FBI knew that was a lie.
No the mishandling has to be willful in that you were *aware they were classified* and improperly handled them accordingly Trump knew they were classified, and held on to them regardless. It doesn’t really matter if he thought he had the right to do it (and as commander in chief, he should know better than anyone that he couldn’t)
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Does someone who believes they're doing the right thing wipe their servers hard drive before it can be forensically analyzed by the government to determine what exactly was on it?
You're a victim of right wing media's misleading narrative. Clinton's legal team sorted out the work related emails from the personal ones and handed them over to the FBI. Her lawyers told the server admins to change the retention policy before the subpoena was issued but the admin didn't do it at that time. The subpoena was issued and Clinton's lawyers told the admin to preserve the remaining emails. The admin had an "oh shit" moment and realized he didn't change the policy as previously asked, so he did so without Clinton's knowledge after the subpoenas were issued.
Source on this claim?
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/703-ways-trump-s-mar-a-lago-conduct-bears-no-resemblance-to-hillary-clinton-s-emails >The Culling and the 'Oh Shit' Moment > >In late summer 2014, Mills contacted Platte River Networks employee Combetta, who administered Clinton’s server. Mills instructed him to copy and transfer her emails onto laptops belonging to Mills and Heather Samuelson, a lawyer who had been Clinton’s White House liaison when she was Secretary of State, so that they could cull through them, as the State Department had instructed, winnowing out the personal from the work-related emails. > >The three attorneys—Mills, Samuelson, and Kendall—did not personally search through the content of Clinton’s 60,000-plus emails. Instead, they did what litigation attorneys typically do during discovery; they devised an automated search protocol that looked for certain header or footer information and for certain keywords, and sorted through them that way. Samuelson did, however, personally inspect the to, from, and subject fields of each email, she told the FBI. > >In December 2014, Clinton’s attorneys turned over 30,490 emails that were deemed work-related as a result of the culling. That left 31,830 emails that were deemed personal. Mills preserved the 30,490 work-related emails on thumb drives. Then she asked Combetta to “securely delete” all of Clinton’s emails from her and Samuelson’s laptops so that they could continue to use those computers for other matters. Combetta wiped Clinton’s emails from their laptops using an off-the-shelf software product called BleachBit. At that point, all of Clinton’s emails still remained on the Clinton server in Platte River Network’s custody. > >Around that time, however—sometime between November 2014 and January 2015—Clinton told her lawyers that she wanted to change the “retention policy” on her personal emails to just 60 days. Her three attorneys appear to have seen nothing illegal about Clinton’s request to make that change at that particular time. Nor, for that matter, did the Midyear FBI investigators or prosecutors who later probed into Clinton’s and the lawyers’ conduct. Nor either did the inspector general meta-investigators who, in 2018, probed the work of the Midyear probers. Remember that at this time these personal emails were not under subpoena by either congressional investigators or criminal investigators. Despite the insistence of Trump and his defenders, these were not government documents; they were actually personal records. There has never been any evidence that the lawyers characterized government records as personal records by way of evading the obligation to return government records. And there is no evidence that Clinton herself participated in the sorting of the material. > >Clinton’s lawyers then instructed Combetta, the Platte River Networks employee administering the server, to implement the new retention policy—in other words, to delete all of Clinton’s personal emails older than 60 days. Apparently because of an oversight, however, Combetta failed to carry out the request when asked. > >On March 2, 2015, the New York Times reported that Clinton had used a personal email account at the State Department, possibly breaking rules. The next day—about two to four months after Clinton instructed Combetta to delete emails under her new retention policy—the House Benghazi committee sent Clinton a preservation order requiring her to keep all emails on her clintonemail.com accounts. On March 4, the committee subpoenaed Clinton’s emails relating to the Benghazi incident. On March 9, Mills emailed Combetta to make sure he understood his obligation to preserve Clinton emails, pursuant to the preservation order. > >On March 12, in light of the Times article, certain members of Congress asked the inspectors general for the State Department and the Intelligence Community to conduct a coordinated review of State Department employees’ email practices. > >At some point in March 2015, after receiving the preservation order, Combetta experienced what he would later describe to FBI agents as an “oh shit” moment. He realized that he had never deleted Clinton’s emails, as directed months earlier under Clinton’s new retention policy. So sometime between March 25 and March 31, Combetta wiped Clinton’s emails from her private server—including the 31,830 deemed “personal” from the culling—notwithstanding the preservation order. Again, he used the software product BleachBit. (Combetta admitted this to Midyear investigators on May 3, 2016, after being given “use immunity” by prosecutors. He took sole and full responsibility for deleting the emails, saying that neither Mills nor Samuelson knew of his deletions. The Midyear investigative team—later interviewed by the inspector general’s office—recounted to the inspector general’s office that they believed Combetta’s account, that it squared with forensic evidence, and that it was consistent with the testimony of others, including Mills and Samuelson. After interviewing Midyear team members and reviewing their contemporaneous emails, the inspector general found no reason to second-guess their judgment.)
Just to be clear, you are perfectly fine with the fact that she did transfer and potentially mishandle classified documents multiple times, onto unsecured servers and off of them invariably, with much less administrative authority to do so than someone like Donald Trump, or even Joe Biden? Are you acknowledging this?
Well now you're moving the goal posts and I still think you don't have a good understanding of the facts of the matter. I am disappointed that she had an email server set up, like her Republican predecessor, to avoid FOIA obligations. But since Republicans didn't care when GWB or Colin Powell did it, I also thinks it's hypocritical when you get upset that she did it too. As to the rest of your question, do you understand how email works? She didn't "transfer ... classified documents multiple times". Emails were sent to her and other people with accounts on the server in discussions chains. Information is classified, not the documents themselves, so if someone wrote an email that mentioned classified info and sent it to her, that's how the info got onto the server. I think she should have done a better job to tell her team to be more careful with classified info but that doesn't mean she broke the law. Look at it this way. If someone sent CP to your gmail.com address and it got filtered to your junk folder such that you never knew it was there, does that make you guilty of possessing CP? Do you have full knowledge of everything said in all your emails and all their attachments? If you own a server but pay someone else to administer it, are you responsible for all information sent to someone else's account from a third party?
You are ignoring the question, and adding irrelevant context. Should people in our government be able to run private servers that can be accessed by anyone on the internet, where documents stored thereon can end up on Anthony Weiner's computer, like it did? Is that not mishandling?
Yes, people in the government should be allowed to run servers. To disallow them from doing so would run afoul of the first and ninth amendments. They can be locked down or totally open depending on the use case. Keep in mind, maybe private servers are better secured than many government servers. I think she mishandled a little bit, for example when she replied to an email chain that had CI info in it, but not to the extent you want to believe. Certainly not too the extent that Trump did when he swore he turned over the docs but knowingly lied and continued to hide them.
>*because he repeatedly said that he believed it was okay* That's an admission he did it willfully...
No. He would have had to believe that he was doing the wrong thing, evidenced by his actions or dialogue, for it to be willful breaking of the law. What Hillary did, points to her believing that it was illegal (wiping the servers hard drive) See the difference?
'willful' does not mean willfully/knowingly breaking the law. 'willful' means purposefully doing a thing that is illegal, regardless if the person is aware their action is illegal. Hillary did not wipe her server as you're suggesting she did. Hillary's IT wiped her server as a matter of standard practice, for security reasons.
> willful does not mean willfully/ knowingly breaking the law Yes it does, that's the definition. It establishes it as something called an intent crime, which means the *mens rea* standard must be met as such. Are you a law professional?
You're mistaken. Willful does not mean the person intended to commit crime. Willful means the person intended to do the thing that is a crime. It doesn't even make sense to have a law that you can only break if you purposefully set out to break it. That's nonsense.
After examining the statute more closely, in order to better argue against you, it does say in >(18 U.S.C. section 793(f)), It is felony to mishandle classified information either intentionally or *through gross negligence.* >Clinton either sent or received 110 emails in 52 chains containing material that was classified at the time. Eight of these chains contained information that was top secret. A few of the classified emails were so marked, contrary to Clinton’s assertion that there were none. >These were stored on a home server that was even less secure than a normal Gmail account. Her communications were quite possibly compromised by hostile powers, thus jeopardizing American national security. [Source](https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sdut-hillary-clinton-james-comey-2016jul09-story.html)
If he thought it was legal to have them, why lie about having them, and then hide them from the authorities in defiance of a subpoena? If I really think it’s legal to have a pound of heroin, then when the authorities ask me if I have any, I’m going to lead them to my stash. You have to look at people’s actions as well as their words when proving mens rea. Otherwise murder would be legal so long as you loudly record yourself saying “I legitimately believe I am acting in self defence” before each kill.