This whole business stinks. Are these people routinely taking classified out of approved vaults/SCIFs and just casually keeping them at home? I get that Trump was THE classification authority, and also had secure storage at home. The rest of them ... not so much. What see when I read this stuff is one egregious security violation piled upon another.
Are we being duped??
Remember, all those documents go to a second party.
“What see when I read this stuff is one egregious security violation piled upon another.”
Right?
And HEAPING DISDAIN for protocols on both sides.
TRUMP perhaps to a lesser extent, because — among all the perpetrators thus far exposed — he actually is the ONE person who, at the time he took the papers into possession, had the power to declassify them.
WHETHER OR NOT they were subsequently re-marked in accordance with his declassification.
No one is saying what level. Confidential as such requires no background checks for reader or handler. A ships Plan of the Day, a rating/MOS training manual, Sit_Reps of machinery etc, and other such communications. Secret and Top Secret are the biggies in classified material. Oh and the two highest are encryted. You're not just gonna pick it up and read it.
I still say President HAS to have a witness that something is declassified! Must be documented that it was declassified. Can’t simply say “I declassify you” 4x and have it be so. Otherwise, all the other copies of classified items will not be updated to unclassified. Which means people with now-unclassified could be charged unfairly.
It doesn’t make sense how this is excused as magic wand.