18 U.S.C. § 1924(a). An element of this offense, which the government must prove beyond a
reasonable doubt, is that the accused is "an officer, employee, contractor, or consultant of the
United States." The President is none of these. See Free Enter. Fund v. Pub. Co. Acct. Oversight
Bd., 561 U.S. 477, 497-98 (2010) (citing U.S. Const., Art. II,§ 2, cl. 2) ("The people do not vote
for the 'Officers of the United States."'); see also Melcher v. Fed. Open Mkt. Comm., 644 F. Supp.
510, 518-19 (D.D.C. 1986), aff'd, 836 F.2d 561 (D.C. Cir. 1987) ("[a]n officer of the United States
can only be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, or by a
court of law, or the head of a department. A person who does not derive his position from one of
these sources is not an officer of the United States in the sense of the Constitution."). Thus, the
statute does not apply to acts by a President.
The scary part is at least 30 people upvoted the dude who said I got it off twitter lol the whole document took me like 4 minutes to read with all the redactions apparently thats too much for redditors and they assume im defending trump or something
Where? The affidavit alleges that there is probable cause for violations of 18 U.S.C. §§ 793(e), 1519, and 2071 (see paragraphs 6 and 79), not 1924(a).
I don't believe that any of the sections cited in the affidavit require the documents to be classified though, and the affidavit does not cite 1924 as one of the statutes that there might be a violation of. So I'm not sure that this argument about Trump not being an officer of the US actually matters.
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u/[deleted] Aug 26 '22
Trumps legal defense if it gets that far: