Reply to Donnie Dumptruck says Mar-A-Lago's been searched by the FBI

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[quote=Anonymous]

From the NYT, in response to Trump claiming docs were declassified:

"Mr. Trump has offered no details, but if he is saying he made a blanket, oral invocation that all the files he took to Mar-a-Lago were unclassified, without making any formal, written record, that would be difficult to prove or disprove. Even if there is no evidence that Mr. Trump followed normal procedures for declassifying certain types of information, his lawyers could argue that he was not constitutionally bound to obey such rules.

But in any case, such a claim would not settle the matter. For one thing, [b]two of the laws that a search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago this week referred to — Sections 1519 and 2071 of Title 18 of the United States Code — make the taking or concealment of government records a crime regardless of whether they had anything to do with national security[/b].

For another, laws against taking or hoarding material with restricted national-security information, which generally carry heavier penalties than theft of ordinary documents, do not always line up with whether the files are technically classified.

That is because some criminal laws enacted by Congress to protect certain national-security information operate separately from the executive branch’s system of classifying documents — created by presidents using executive orders — as “confidential,” “secret” or “top secret.”

In particular, a third law the warrant references was Section 793, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison per offense. Better known as the Espionage Act, it was enacted by Congress during World War I, decades before President Harry S. Truman issued an executive order creating the modern classification system for the executive branch.

As a result, [b]the Espionage Act makes no reference to whether a document has been deemed classified. Instead, it makes it a crime to retain, without authorization, documents related to the national defense that could be used to harm the United States or aid a foreign adversary.[/b]"[/quote]

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