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slater71

(1,153 posts)
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 11:22 AM Aug 2022

Trying to find the answer to this question.

If Trump did declassify all this stuff at his home before he left office, can he then take all that to his private home to keep? I would think not. I have not heard anything on this other than he declassified it all so no problem. Of course, that was on FOX. And then if he could not do this then he got caught with the goods and should have been arrested and charged. I am sure anyone of us would have been charged if we worked at the WH and took some declassified papers home for keepsakes.

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elleng

(137,862 posts)
1. No
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 11:23 AM
Aug 2022

Trump's defense after espionage investigation 'will fail': former US attorney
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-s-defense-after-espionage-investigation-will-fail-former-us-attorney/ar

"Barbara McQuade, let's talk about the word classified," host Coffin prompted. "Trump is already claiming that the papers in question were, quote-unquote, declassified. If that's true with this change anything in terms of the DOJ probe, especially if we are considering the three laws known to be used to carry out the search?"

"No, this defense will fail because the three laws that they selected to put on the search warrant don't require that the documents be classified," McQuade replied. "I think until we saw that unsealed search warrant on Friday, we expected that they would charge the statute that was used for General David Petraeus and [former NSA adviser] Sandy Berger, which does require the mishandling of classified information. Instead, they require only one charge of government records, another charge related to national defense and another concealment of records when the government comes calling for them."

unblock

(54,480 posts)
2. what elleng said. mishandling classified information might be *another* charge to the 3 listed
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 11:32 AM
Aug 2022

Wounded Bear

(61,181 posts)
3. He can't just wave his hands and declare shit "declassified"...
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 11:36 AM
Aug 2022

there's a process, and if that happened, a lot of people would know about it.

csziggy

(34,189 posts)
9. And there would be a paper trail
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 12:24 PM
Aug 2022

Which there was not.

I've read that NARA went through the memos and other paperwork they had and used that to identify papers that had not been turned over. For instance, if there was a log of who had access to particular Confidential, Secret, et al documents, but those documents were not in the papers turned over by TFG's White House office, NARA knew to ask for them.

Inventorying all that paperwork, then the boxes turned over earlier could be part of the reason it's taken so long to get to the point of a warrant, including all the legal steps that were taken to request missing documents.

tulipsandroses

(6,665 posts)
7. This is the end all and be all for me.
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 12:01 PM
Aug 2022

It’s infuriating that the trumpist party is going on an on about this being political, witch-hunt, blah blah blah. When they have spent over a year trying to get these documents back and doing it with out making a spectacle. They have gone twice to retrieve documents, issued a subpoena and yet he still held on to top secret documents. His defenders do not want to talk about that.
At the end of the day, they don’t belong to him, he has been granted more patience than anyone else would have gotten to return them.

 

onecaliberal

(36,594 posts)
8. There is a process for declassification. He ripped off the documents, he sold the information.
Sat Aug 13, 2022, 12:13 PM
Aug 2022

He knew what he was doing.

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