(09-07-2022, 01:34 PM)jagibelieve Wrote:

(09-07-2022, 08:04 AM)The Real Marty Wrote: Who knows how all this will turn out?  I sure don't.  What I would like to know, though, is why Trump took classified documents with him when he left office.  I have yet to year any plausible explanation.  And if he declassified them, why does the special master need a top secret security clearance to see them?

Obviously you are not very familiar with how documents become "classified".  I tried to explain it before and I'll try again as someone who has handled classified material during a full career.

This is a hypothetical example.  President Trump is on a phone call with say Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  He takes notes as they are speaking.  During their conversation, the Prime Minister mentions say a birthday for his grandchild.  On a separate sheet of paper, President Trump makes a note so that a gift can be sent.

By default, because of who he was talking to, all notes taken are immediately "classified" to the appropriate level.  There is an entry in the database that says something to the effect of "X number of pages".  So in our example, perhaps he took 3 pages of notes.  Pages 1 and 2 are notes related to something "Top Secret" while page 3 is his personal note regarding the birthday.  By default his personal note regarding the birthday is "Top Secret" even though it is essentially harmless to the country.

President Trump wanted that note as a memoir for his Presidential Library, so that's why he took it (only page 3).

As to your last question, in order to access any material deemed "classified" a person has to have two things.  1) The level of classification or higher (in this case Top Secret since that is how the document was originally labeled).  2) A "need to know".  Just because I might have a Top Secret Clearance that doesn't mean that I can read just any document with that classification level.  The claim by the DOJ is that the documents were "classified" and that would come from the inventory entry of "phone call xx/xx/xxxx page 3 of 3 President notes".

The speculation by the media that these were "high level secrets" and that he "might try to sell them" is the most absurd thing that I have seen in the press.