re: BREAKING: Trump describes process of how he declassified documents found at Mar-a-Lago

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Why do you think every single document Trump has in his possession haven't been FOIA-ed successfully, when the man has been under constant scrutiny by every media outlet and agency for 6 years?

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Because this "standing order" was just made up today.

The alternative is that you're telling me declassified documents can still be secrets not available to the public which feeds back into the point another poster was making about the search warrant's cited statutes applying to national secrets and not classified information.

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Is there a statute that says top secret documents can't be taken to a residence by a president and retain their classification? I'm not aware of one so I'm truly interested.

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I admittedly knew nothing about the process of the NARA and PRA until a few hours ago when I decided to do a little research. All week I have been caught up with the same thing everyone else has, "classified" "nukes" "espionage act" etc.

This is what I learned:

1. The President can declassify whatever he wants whenever he wants while in office and needs no approval from any other individuals or agencies. This is what Trump has been talking about today and Kash talked about months ago. From that standpoint, if Trump did in fact declassify them before 1/20/2021 then they are no longer classified documents regardless of what the stamp on the box says or the DOJ database says (allegedly they dragged their feet with the declass paperwork and never got around to it). While Trump was still in the White House, documents had to be declassified to leave the Oval Office and be taken to the Residence portion of the White House, according to one of his earlier statements.

2. The PRA (Presidential Records Act) dictates what is to happen to all records from a president after leaving office. The gist is that when a president's term ends all private records become public records and must be turned over to the NARA. Including boxes of declassified documents that may or may not incriminate the DOJ/FBI/CIA/Obama Administration. This means he can't keep those boxes at Mar a Lago.

3. The NARA (National Archives and Records Administration) is the agency responsible for overseeing and administering the records from the time a president leaves office. They are held in DC until the Presidential Library is built and then transferred there. All documents are automatically sealed from the public for 5 years and most of them can be extended another 7 years after that. Congress and government agencies can access them during this time if needed.

I also learned that back in Feb 2022 NARA discovered Trump had 15 boxes of documents and requested they be returned. That is the collection that included the love note from Kim and the welcome letter from Obama. Much to do was made about this in the media, by the J6 committee, and and investigation was opened by the DOJ to look into what was in those boxes (allegedly they contained classified docs)

I believe I heard there was a visit in June where DOJ/FBI/someone collected more boxes from Mar a Lago. This is when they told him to replace the locks.

Then we have the raid on Monday.

What is confusing/distracting is the media is only talking about classified documents, nuclear secrets, and Espionage Act. Those are all big scary words that rile up the public.

If Trump did in fact declassify the documents and there are no nuclear secrets among them then he is likely not in deep deep shite.

However, the mere presence of those boxes at Mar a Lago, regardless of their contents, does violate the PRA. Normally that would be a tisk tisk please give us those boxes back and the benefit of the doubt would be extended that it was inadvertent.

Given that this was the 3rd request for all documents, and if they are in fact boxes full of Crossfire Hurricane and other incriminating evidence which Trump would full well know were in his possession, that brings up the intent concern and things could get dicey even if there was no classified or nuclear documents.

The only logical explanations are:

1. Trump is an idiot and thought he could steal those documents and nobody would ever notice.

2. Trump took those documents for safe keeping so they wouldn't be destroyed and knew eventually the DOJ would come looking for them. He is willing to take the fall on violating the PRA with the goal that the documents end up in court and become public knowledge. The exposure of just how deep and wide the corruption and efforts to remove a sitting president will outweigh the damage of violating the PRA. That is quite the risk, but Trump is nothing if not a risk taker.

eta:
3. Someone on Trump's team during the pack up move out phase inadvertently or intentionally packed up classified or declassified documents and sent them off with the rest of his stuff to Mar a Lago unbeknownst to Trump. He was set up. Once he realized what was there he panicked and decided to hide the boxes.

4. Trump took the documents for an unknown reason (potentially as innocuous as to write a memoir) and believed (pretty reasonably) that the DOJ would not take serious steps to recover them because of the predictable massive political fallout that would result.

Have they even locked in on a story of why they invaded his home yet? Was it Jan. 6th? Was it boxes of sumpin'? Was it nuclear secrets? Did they just want to check for newds of Melania, and smell her draws?

So you’ll wager that he’ll be convicted?