Originally Posted By CMiller:


@MaxxII Ok, thanks for at least answering the question.

I did see that, it was the only part I thought might remotely be relevant.  And it certainly would be relevant, if the question was regarding the President's authority regarding classification.  But it isn't.  Literally NOBODY says Trump did not have the power to declassify anything he wanted, while he was President.  Not even the craziest most wacko lefty commie socialist ANTIFA BLM whatever Trump hater says that.

The only question being argued on the topic of classification is whether the President has to prove he actually declassified something for it to be true.  Trump has made no claim other than "I did it in my mind".  He hasn't claimed he told anybody, and he certainly hasn't said he wrote it down anywhere.

There are people here saying it's enough that he says he had the thought, or the evidence of it happening is the boxes being moved out of the White House.

I, and every legal analyst I respect, think that's ridiculous.  I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to try to collect the citations to include in a court filing making the case, but I did find where this question came before the 5th Circuit appeals court recently (panel of 3 judges), and they very curtly dismissed it as nonsense.  They basically said "you say it happened, but you have provided no evidence it happened, so it didn't happen.  But even if it did, it still doesn't matter because he can show no need to have those documents in the first place.  So GTFO of here."

I also offered the Presidential Records Act where it says the President SHALL make sure every official act of his office is documented.

I have yet to see anybody provide anything that makes the case for how those judges wrong, other than unsubstantiated claims (repeated many times in various threads).  If I'm a troll for not accepting that, then I guess I need to revise my definition of troll.

(The question is also not HOW the President has to document his declassification of something, only WHETHER he must do it in some way of his choosing.  I think it's well established that it is at the very least not clear how Trump would have had to document any last minute declassification.
But it 's obvious that when he wanted to make sure it happened, as he did regarding the Crossfire Hurricane documents, he/his team made sure to leave no doubt--they wrote it up in an executive order and he signed it right before he left office.)



Thanks for the repost.

I'm unclear as to the facts on this one.  Have you seen something authoritative that has established this?

I was trying to figure out why nobody is talking about this, even at Fox News (who I'm quite confident would like to talk about anything they can substantiate that favors Trump's side of the story).  I think it might be because none of this is new--even though it might have been redacted in the court documents, here's a story from CNN in 2022 talking about it:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/10/politics/trump-documents-shipping-gsa/index.html

Here's a Bloomberg story that I think was the first reporting about 100 pages of emails related to all of it, correspondence between Trump's people and GSA (might be a paywall):

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-05/trump-says-feds-packed-top-secret-mar-a-lago-documents-foia-says-they-didn-t

Here's a WP story from a week ago going through all of it--they also reported on the GSA thing in 2022:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/30/trump-documents-case-rumor-false/

An excerpt:

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After Trump (grudgingly) left office, he was allotted funding to run a transition office, a process that involved the GSA. Because he rejected his election loss for so long, his team was slow to set things up. Shortly before Biden was inaugurated, Vice President Mike Pence’s team chose a GSA-managed space in Crystal City for its office. Trump’s team asked whether it could be there, too.

Former presidents are allowed six months of funding for their transitions. So, with a hard deadline of July 21, Trump’s team operated out of the GSA building in Crystal City. One staffer informed the GSA that “as many as 100 boxes of presidential gifts would be stored at the Crystal City office,” The Post reported, based on an email sent to the GSA.

“[T]he Crystal City office was crammed with leftover stuff from the Trump White House with no apparent organization and little knowledge of what was even there,” our report noted.

July 21 arrived, and the Crystal City office still had a bunch of stuff in it. Trump’s staff put material into boxes and boxes on pallets. Two pallets finally arrived at Mar-a-Lago on Sept. 14. The other four pallets (including two that had been repacked after a pallet became oversized) went to a nearby storage facility.

In requesting material to pack up Crystal City, Trump staffer Desiree Thompson Sayle asked for 30 bankers’ boxes, the small white boxes featured in photos in the Trump indictment. There were also 15 small cardboard boxes, 30 medium-size ones and 10 large ones. The pallets that ended up at Mar-a-Lago were a mix of these types of boxes.

Compare this with Kelly’s presentation. These were not obviously “the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings,' ” though some may have been. Regardless, the material in Crystal City was not held or managed by the GSA; instead, it was material that was part of Trump’s post-presidential office. Trump also brought several boxes directly to Mar-a-Lago after he left office.

Interestingly, a member of Trump’s team provided a letter to the GSA (at the agency’s request) attesting that “the items being shipped from Arlington, VA to Palm Beach, FL are required to wind down the Office of the Former President or are items that are property of the Federal Government” — stipulations required for the move to be paid for by transition funds.

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Again, there are a lot of facts to establish before this question can be discussed.  From what I can figure out, basically this story started with a factual statement (that technically the evidence is not EXACTLY as it was when removed during the raid).

Then, ignoring any related details, MAGA Media just ran with the narrative "evidence has been tampered with, manipulated, altered, etc." and all the legal "experts" reacted based on worst case assumptions.

If evidence really was tampered with, altered, manipulated, etc. to the point that it meets whatever legal standard exists where it becomes a serious problem, then I would certainly be on the side of "this is a serious problem!"

BUT...

If you really care about the truth, feel free to read the source document for yourself.  Remember--the only source for these claims is statements made by the government in a court filing, so there isn't much to argue about regarding the known information so far:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.522.0.pdf

It's only 13 pages, and the relevant section begins on page 6.  You can read it in a few minutes.

For the TL/DR crowd--they describe what has happened to the boxes since they were seized, who has handled them, who has done what with them, etc.  The ONLY notable part of the entire document is that they volunteer (without being asked first) that things are not EXACTLY as they were originally, because the order of documents might have changed for various innocuous reasons.  However, the contents of each box are exactly as they were originally, other than that placeholders were substituted for classified documents that needed to be stored separately so as to follow security protocols properly.

Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine: A rule under which evidence that is the direct result of illegal conduct on the part of an official is inadmissible in a criminal trial against the victim of the conduct.

I assume it's obvious why I would be dubious so far about claims that all of this meets that definition.

Do with all that as you wish, I hope I have satisfied your demands and maybe positively affected your perception of me a little...?