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Originally Posted by photon
Except Biden returned them when they were discovered. As did Pence. These guys handle enough documents it's no surprise that things get missed or left behind. That's different than actively taking them and bragging about it.
But that's why Pence and Biden weren't prosecuted and Trump was; because Trump refused to return them and apparently actively tried to hide them (at least that was part of the prosecution's case).
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In all those cases, it was a product of their work spilling over into their private spaces. Obviously, politicians often work from home, and sometimes that involves classified documents. It's not an excuse for mishandling documents, but it's a reasonable explanation.
Trump did it AFTER he left the White House. He kept them long after he was out of office, so it wasn't for any official reason. Who knows why he did it, but it is an outlier compared to others. There's no reasonable explanation for why he had those documents.
That's the thing, there's a scale of mistakes and malfeasances. You have guys like Harper on one end, who was the least controversial leader I can remember in my lifetime (I know someone will snap at that comment and point out something terrible he did, but seriously, he was pretty scandal free). On the other end, you have guys like Trump, who literally rewrite the rules on what constitutes a scandal. In between you have a gradient of scandal from leaders like Biden, Mulroney, Trudeau to people like Reagan, Clinton (Bill, not Hillary), and Bush. I notice he conveniently left off Obama, largely because it didn't fit the narrative. Instead of having that nuanced discussion, and then pointing out that Trump is an extreme outlier in that group, you're lumping them together as "all bad", when there is clearly a scale of bad. But then, you also have to look at the beneficial things each leader has done and weigh out the balance.
It's almost as if politics deals in shade of gray, and is not conducive to black and white characterizations. It's lazy thinking to just say stuff like "all politicians are crooked and bad". No more so than any other person in any other profession ever. I'd like to see what happens when someone takes a fine tooth comb to look for transgressions in any private citizen's work or personal life. Chances are most of us wouldn't look very good.