If in fact there were highly-sensitive ‘nuclear documents’ sought and/or recovered from Mar-A-Lago in the FBI search, there is a sticky question remaining:
Why would the National Archives, DOJ and FBI spend 18 months asking ‘pretty please’ for these super-secret (and not subject to POTUS declassification*) documents to be returned?
I believe — but have no proof — that the answer is that until the ‘MAL Mole’ spoke to the FBI and dished on the identity and locations of the documents, they were unknown to the government. That would explain several things:
- Why was there a sudden massive escalation in the intensity of the effort from NARA being given 15 boxes (and not being able to search for others at MAL) to the subpoena which netted another few documents (and not being able to search for others at MAL) to ‘everybody out in the parking lot! Blow the safe! Rummage in Melania’s drawers!.
- How could the classified document custodians not have known these documents were missing?
- What was it that prompted the ‘rat’ to come forward? Although perhaps it was an observant Secret Service agent, it was most likely someone very trusted by tRump. That means someone close to him — ‘under his spell’ — who saw something so massively horrible and heinous that they were able and willing to break the spell and dish to the FBI. tRump casually pulling nuclear documents out of his safe and bragging about them would do it.
- Remember that the FBI had to have specific knowledge that the documents they were searching for were in that safe in order to get it included in the search warrant, and the only way that happens is from the ‘rat’
- Apropos of nothing at all…. has anyone heard from Mark Meadows lately? Tucker Carlson?
So I could be completely wrong, but that’s my theory until it gets proven wrong.
On another note, a quick reading of 18 USC 793 shows that the word ‘classified’ (or anything like it) does not appear at all. The law specifies ‘defense information’, and what cannot be done with it without committing a federal crime, but it does not distinguish between classified and unclassified status of military documents.
So that appears to shoot down any defense of ‘but I declassified everything before I left the White House.’ Doesn’t matter, turd-ball.
And aside from that, POTUS waving his hands over a document merely starts the process of its declassification. There’s a lot of work that goes into that process — for instance, the document has to be re-marked as ‘unclassified’, and all other copies of that document have to be re-marked as well. If something like a classified project name is declassified as part of that process, then all mentions of that should be tracked down and declassified as well….. it’s a complicated process.
Finally, it seems that we as a country need to take some measures to protect ourselves in case another malignant narcissistic sociopath stumbles into the White House…. Such as not letting a president unilaterally declassify stuff — a good president won’t mind if there is a committee to approve something like that, and a bad president is what we need to protect ourselves from.
Cheers.
*Documents pertaining to atomic/nuclear energy and weapons are classified separately under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and not subject to presidential declassification.