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Richard White's avatar

"You must wonder if the document-shredding party is already underway, despite calls to preserve all the emails, memos, and texts."

If the Trump team is smart, they will, even as we speak, be having quiet, off-the-record conversations with the IT heads of all the suspect departments. Maybe not even the heads, but a couple of key grundoons, and remind them of the importance of system backups and exactly who is criminally liable if the backups don't exist.

Speaking from experience here.

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Freedom 4 conservatives's avatar

Sometimes the best strategy is to gently remind an underling that if he/she facilitates the crime committed by his/her boss, he/she can be charged as an accessory to the crime--with same penalties if convicted that would be levied on the boss. The underling on a middling government salary with a spouse, 3 kids, and a big mortgage probably doesn't much want a $250K fine and 5 years in prison for erasing some data. Not to mention losing his/her government job and pension.

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tresho's avatar

"The underling on a middling government salary " I suspect many of them have already secretly created vast stores of copies of correspondence, recordings, etc. they haven't told anyone about, sitting on hard drives, flash drives, printed out, all concealed on their grandparents' farmland or in well marked caches on forgotten BLM land. They are not all idiots.

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Richard White's avatar

I thought as much myself. I certainly would have done so. Not only to protect myself, but, let's be honest here, there might be a possibility of $$$ one way or another.

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Kathy Christian's avatar

That would be the smart thing to do. That's what I suspect Karpinski did when they demoted her for Abu Graibh, told them she'd write a book telling all the details of who ordered what, and it worked, because they quietly repromoted her afterward.

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Kathy Christian's avatar

Like a dead man's switch.

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Abbybwood's avatar

I thought “everything” is in the cloud?

Ask Kamala to ‘splain it.

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