4w ago

Judge Cannon shields 'classified' info from Trump assassination attempt suspect

lawandcrime.com Judge Cannon shields 'classified' info from Trump assassination attempt suspect

Trump assassination suspect Ryan Routh, who is accused of attempting to shoot the president at one of his golf courses, has been blocked from accessing "classified information" related to his case.

So it wasn't an assassination attempt after all.

29 comments

this is stupid. I will agree the government has a right to keep things classified but they should be required to drop all charges to do so. Keeping the secrets should mean letting the accused go free.
- It depends on what secrets are being kept. Here, I would guess that the accused is asking for information relating to secret service deployments, surveillance, and other information on how he was discovered. That information would be useful to future assassins, but doesn't serve to mitigate his actions or exonerate him.
  Just because the accused asks a question with a classified answer does not mean the accused should go free.
  
  But in this case, I'm for it.
  
  I mean that does seem relevant to his case if it specifically on what they were doing in realtion to him. I think the idea future assassins would be able to use it to make assasinations easier to be a bit much. They likely could get things like that from books of retired people.
- Well, he could have been requesting files on area 51 for all the article says.
  
  this is a good point. I guess I was assuming for things related to his case.
- I will agree the government has a right to keep things classified
  Can you explain why you think this? I'm not trying to argue or anything, just interested in others reasoning. For context: I am contemplating the contradictions of a government "of, for and by the people", is funded by the people, and that is allowed to withhold information from those same people.
  
  Say there are analysts/agents preventing cyber-warfare by other countries. Their personal information and methods need to be kept secret to continue being effective when charging foreigners that commit espionage or damaging attacks against domestic targets.
  
  Maybe right is to strong a term as that word should only be used for humans. More that its reasonable that some things need to be classified. Military capability comes to mind as a lot of money can be saved by it not being known how extensive capabilities are.