Joe Biden admitted yesterday that he kept classified documents in his garage, his locked garage, where he keeps his 'Vette. He admitted that live to Peter Doocy. That is not a place to store classified documents.
When I was a soldier, we had a special, heavy filing cabinet that met the requirements for storing FOUO and SECRET documents. It stayed in the S-2 (Intelligence) shop. It was purged regularly and there was a huge paperwork train that went with even opening the cabinet. We were not allowed to keep TOP SECRET documents in that cabinet.
Careers have been wrecked over the mis-handling of classified documents. Trump was wrong, Joe is wrong, and that simply is the way it is. Trump does have the defense that, as a sitting president, he has the authority to declassify documents. Joe does not have that defense. Joe did not also have a SCIF, which can store those documents.
But, we must remember that we cannot indict a sitting president. We couldn't indict Nixon, we couldn't indict Clinton. Nor Bush, nor Obama, nor Trump. We cannot indict Biden as long as he sits in the chair. This is purely a political issue at this point, and Joe has to reap the whirlwind.
One of my duties was to test our unit security, so I and my partner went around trying to get into safes. It was a lot more fun than going through the log sheets looking for errors. Lifted blotters, looked under phones, the inside sides of desk drawers, and lots more common locations looking for scraps of paper with numbers on them. That was right after going straight to the cabinets and safes and trying building numbers, unit designators, phone numbers, and then birthdates of those authorized to open them.
ReplyDeleteNever occurred to me to go out and look besides cars in the parking lot.
And I may be wrong, but I think the authority to downgrade/unclass at will and relocate classified docs rests only with the President, not the Vice. Biden was not President at the time.
Don't forget that when the FBI raided Mar A Lago, they had to cut open Trump's safe to get to the documents in question, which means that they most likely were properly stored.
ReplyDeleteHow was President Trump wrong?
ReplyDelete- Given that many documents are given a classification higher than warrented. Included is the overuse of 'national security'.
- The president has the power to declass.
- Many documents so classified are not threats to national security.
Should the presidential power to delassify be labeled only as a defense?
https://i.imgur.com/YQ8IeEw.jpg
ReplyDelete