From The Washington Post:
Some of the White House documents that Donald Trump improperly took to his Mar-a-Lago residence were clearly marked as classified, including documents at the “top secret” level, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
The Presidential Records Act is one of the many rules and norms Donald Trump ignored with abandon during his time in office, defying its order to keep all presidential papers by ripping many of them up or reportedly throwing them in the toilet. According to the Washington Post, it wasn’t just routine memos Trump was keeping out of the National Archives: Of the 15 boxes of documents the agency recently seized at Mar-a-Lago, many papers were clearly designated as classified, including several documents restricted to top-secret clearance.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post:
From reporting in The Post, we learned this week that the National Archives and Records Administration had to recover 15 boxes of documents that Trump wrongly took with him to Mar-a-Lago, rather than sending them to the agency as required by law. From the Times, we learned that there may have been some classified material in those purloined documents. And now the National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to investigate the matter.
We also know that some of the documents Trump did send to the Archives when he left office were pieced together with tape because of Trump’s habit of ripping up papers by hand when he finished with them — despite having been repeatedly warned, including by his chiefs of staff, that federal law required all those materials to be preserved. As Politico first reported in 2018, aides constantly had to fish torn bits of paper out of wastebaskets and painstakingly reassemble them.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
The National Archives and Records Administration discovered what it believed was classified information in documents Donald J. Trump had taken with him from the White House as he left office, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The discovery, which occurred after Mr. Trump returned 15 boxes of documents to the government last month, prompted the National Archives to reach out to the Justice Department for guidance, the person said. The department told the National Archives to have its inspector general examine the matter, the person said.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
(b) Whoever, having the custody of any such record, proceeding, map, book, document, paper, or other thing, willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, falsifies, or destroys the same, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both; and shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States. As used in this subsection, the term “office” does not include the office held by any person as a retired officer of the Armed Forces of the United States.
Lock him up! Lock him up!
