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NCMaureen's avatar

I am curious about how documents are managed at the WH and National Archives. How could top secret documents walk out the WH door with Trump? Aren’t there safeguards that keep track of top secret stuff? Or maybe what’s in these boxes isn’t really top secret but we are being told they are so Trump looks bad.

If Trump was keeping self-incriminating stuff why wouldn’t he scrub it, ya, know with bleach, like Hillary did?

Why was it necessary to bring armed FBI agents to retrieve boxes? Was that for photo ops?

I read Jonathan Turley’s article that an FBI raid wasn’t even necessary. Say Trump refused to return the documents. The next step would be a special prosecutor. Going full armed FBI was shocking and out of proportion.

There is a democrat motive here and I don’t think we see all the cards in their hand.

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Kathy Barkulis's avatar

You’d have to believe that Trump packed up all his belongings himself and carried them out to a PODS container.

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Christopher B's avatar

My understanding is that part of the issue is that some if not all of this material was packed by GAO staff in the final days or even hours before Trump had to vacate the White House. Having moved a few times I have a feeling by that point the highest priority was getting this stuff into those boxes with little regard to what was being removed. People acting like Trump or his people were meticulously selecting critical documents for removal are mostly blowing smoke. Reports coming out now indicate the discussions between Trump and the National Archives are over such important documents as napkins and menus from White House functions.

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Terry's avatar

A report I read somewhere mentions some of it was correspondence, including a letter from B. Obama. Hardly the level of nuclear secrets.

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Terry's avatar

His staff has been cooperating with requests to return material. This is all just political theater, designed to "make Trump unelectable". As is the New York AG's crusade.

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BillS's avatar

I think it is likely that if Trump did have classified documents. The information contained in them is damaging to the Intelligence agencies themselves. Why else would they want them so badly?

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NCMaureen's avatar

Good point. But did he declassify them while still President?

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JOAN FURLONG's avatar

Apparently he declassified massive amounts of documents before leaving office. At least according to Kash Patel (Chief of Staff to Trump's Sec'y of Defense) who was interviewed by Seb Gorka a few weeks ago. John Solomon of JusttheNews.com also reported this. I don't recall the specifics, but apparently there was some discussion that Trump's direction to declassify was ignored by subordinates, or possibly that staff at the National Archives later "reclassified" some of the documents after Trump left office... (speculating here, but "reclassified" at whose direction?) Lots of speculation that the documents in question exposed corruption within the intelligence community.

I couldn't find that interview, but here's a link to a short piece from justthenews.com from today:

https://justthenews.com/podcasts/kash-patel-offers-trump-defense-he-may-have-already-verbally-declassified-documents-doesnt

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