Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/21/noose-tightens.html
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Standard legal precaution. I’m surprised it didn’t come earlier, but I guess the motion to preserve had to wait until Trump’s family was officially under investigation.
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If other legal constraints, ethical concerns and traditional methods of conducting the executive branch of government haven’t mattered to these people, why should this request slow down any destruction of evidence?
At no point does the decision making process seem to ever even factor in consequences. What consequences?
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I’m sure the Americans who were so incensed and vitriolic about Hillary deleting personal emails will find a way to justify and defend all the destruction of evidence that Trump and his associates will be found to have done.
And rest assured if it hasn’t already been done, it will.
If you are idiotic enough to fire the head of the FBI because (by your own admission) he’s investigating “the Russia thing”, then try to limit what his successor can delve into by deeming some stuff “off limits”, then really what’s to stop you destroying evidence?
He’s a crook, people who have done business with him know he’s a crook, and his crookedness has been on public display for decades, but the partisan dimwits that voted for him will make asinine excuses right up to (and probably beyond) the point where he burns down the White House while setting fire to documents.
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Is the reason this might work because it is hard for EVERYBODY to delete EVERYTHING?
Between system backups, electronic snooping and other ways data is moved and archived, it is pretty hard to clean up the entire trail of communication. If just one leaker exists, or if just one person forgets to delete a thing, the conversation can still be found.
I assume (hope) it is worse to be the person whose half of the conversation is missing from the records.
Even if there is malice and intent to coverup, it is hard to do, right?
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I can see them now, running the shredder until it smokes, not realizing how digital storage works.
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True, but you still have to do it so they can’t claim ignorance when it comes out later on that they did.
Let me put it this way: any act of destruction is now unquestionably obstruction of justice. I don’t know how it will work for the President (who theoretically has immunity while he’s in office), but anyone who helps him destroy anything is now an accessory to obstruction. In ordinary court cases, ignoring a judge’s order to preserve is itself a crime, and can imperil any chance of winning a court case even if all the prosecution proves is that you did destroy something, and even if they can’t prove the content of the destroyed evidence. If someone you order to destroy something keeps a copy or record to cover their own ass, you’re that much more fucked. Given how badly Trump’s White House leaks, he or his family and subordinates be fools to order anything destroyed. Which of course means they probably will.
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You can be so cruel sometimes.
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Whoa!
Trump better dig up some dirt on this guy stat!
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It wouldn’t surprise me if the only documents were in personal email accounts.
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Not only that, this regime is so leaky that if it were a ship, it would be called the USS Colander. Apparently little of the staff is loyal to a boss who only demands loyalty yet never gives it.
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Well that should be as effective as those tags that are on mattresses that say Do Not Remove!. Now they’re backed into a corner …Do Not Destroy! Given his record of being honest and law abiding it should be just a waiting game. Maybe junior’s little dumbass will drive box loads of incriminating evidence over to Mueller’s office.
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Someone should tell them that they don’t need to waste a lot of time shoving paper into a shredder 10 pages at a time. All they need to do is run a magnet over them. They might see still see the words, but that’s just an afterimage. Basic eye science.
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Like the politician who tries to buy up all of the copies of a particular day’s newspaper when they don’t like the contents therein? Sounds about right for this crowd’s level of sophistication.
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In a word?
Yep.
If nothing else, 45 & Co. have shown that they are inept as fuck, at pretty much everything; and bless the internet, there’s always a “ghost in the shell” somewhere, even when one is diligent about ‘the cyber.’
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Mueller is giving the administration rope to hang themselves with. Destroying evidence when explicitly requested not to would make for a pretty damn easy obstruction of justice case.
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The story uses words like “ask” and “request”. Does Mueller not have the authority to order that the material be preserved?
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I think it’s called 'courtesy."
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