We may never know the real answer to this question unless someone very close to Trump spills the beans. I have read many times or seen on TV interviews with Trump White House staff who said that Trump was not interested in intelligence briefings, that he seldom read the reports or the daily briefings, that he frequently ripped up important documents. Yet he took many boxes of documents with him when he left.
Some of the documents in the boxes that were retrieved in January and in August were classified as top secret. Some were marked HCS, meaning “Human Intelligence Control System.” Such documents identify sources who are our agents in other countries. Some folders marked”Classified” or “Top secret” were empty. Where were the contents?
Mr. Trump and his defenders have claimed he declassified the material he took to Mar-a-Lago. But documents retrieved from him in January included some marked “HCS,” for Human Intelligence Control System. Such documents have material that could possibly identify C.I.A. informants, meaning a general, sweeping declassification of them would have been, at best, misguided.
“HCS information is tightly controlled because disclosure could jeopardize the life of the human source,” said John B. Bellinger III, a former legal adviser to the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration. “It would be reckless to declassify an HCS document without checking with the agency that collected the information to ensure that there would be no damage if the information were disclosed.”
In October 2021, the New York Times reported that U.S. intelligence officials sent a cable to all of its overseas agencies warning that an unusually high number of CIA undercover agents had been captured and/or killed in recent years.
Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said.
And Trump took home with him a huge number of highly sensitive documents that included some identifying human sources of information in other countries. Some of the top secret files were empty.
Hmmm. Does 2+2=4?
Why would he want those names? How valuable would they be to his friends in other countries? What were they worth? To whom?
One consistent feature in Trump’s life: it’s always about money.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Re “Mr. Trump and his defenders have claimed he declassified the material he took to Mar-a-Lago.” Declassification of documents leaves a paper trail, which these morons cannot produce because Trump believes in magic, not papaerwork. Those documents were not declassified, because if they were that could be verified by a simple document search for the requires papaerwork.
And, please, please let Trump’s treason be about “the money.” A no more permanent disgrace could ensue.
Trump thinks that he can declassify merely by speaking the words “I deem thee declassified.” As you point out, there is a required process that requires paperwork.
And whether they are declassified is not even the issue in the search warrant. It is illegal to possess national defense vital national defense and security documents, including ones having to do with weapons systems and human intelligence tradecraft and personnel. What blows my mind is that we are even talking about this. He has defied extremely important laws. Openly. He should already have been arrested and should be headed to trial and certain conviction, followed by prison.
sorry about the typo
Correction: It is illegal to possess national defense and security documents, including ones having to do with weapons systems and human intelligence tradecraft and personnel–the kinds of documents that get some of the designations that were given ones that were simply lying around at Trump’s beach house.
The dumpster is a traitor and a grifter TO THE MAX!
Yvonne
I love your comments.
Brief and accurate.
You say in just a few words what people have taken books to say.
Has anyone checked out Obama and Clinton for museum docs…not Hillary, of course, we know where hers went.
I don’t recall either Obama or Hillary stealing Top Secret documents, April, do you?
Do you really trust the media to say anything against the Democratic administrations? Kennedy and Johnson administrations were hardly angelic. Ok, I didn’t care for Nixon or Bush Sr either!
Hillary managed to bleach bit a lot of documents. I imagine that Benghazi and a lot of Clinton foundation information would have been on them. I don’t believe that there is much secret information to be found on these documents at the president’s home. He likes to collect stuff and probably wants it in his presidential library. He has a very big ego. The DOJ is fishing for anything to pin on DJT and ignores President Biden and his family’s illegal behavior that occurred while in office. I believe that liberties have been taken against Trump that could/should have been done with other presidents. Hate and fear are very motivating to his adversaries.
Presidents are not allowed to take Top Secret documents home. Period. He probably sold them to Putin and the Saudis.
The Obama and Clinton presidential records were turned over to the National Archives which then remanded some of them to their respective Presidential Libraries. As such, they have always been under legal control and the possession of the United States, not of the former presidents. Please pay attention, April. You should know this. Neither kept, themselves, presidential records because THAT IS ILLEGAL.
Perhaps we should just wait and see what the independent surveyors say as to what the contents contained. The DOJ has been doing a slow leak of contents. Maybe this will stop. He was in communication with the archives and invited them to come back… why didn’t they return? He had been following their instructions to the point of adding another lock which they removed in the raid. Would you appreciate having a gestapo invading your wife and sons bedroom?. Bill Clinton had tapes in his sock drawer and the courts said he could keep them. Those would have been revealing in light of his extra-curricular activities.
So you think the FBI are liars?
April, what do the following designations mean?
Top Secret Document
Special Access Program Document
Sensitive Compartmented Information
Trump had documents with the highest levels of sensitivity, ones classified in these ways because their revelation would do substantial harm to the security of the United States, at his freaking beach house, lying around the office, in closets, in an unlocked room in the basement.
April, Trump was not “following their instructions. They asked for any presidential documents he had taken from the White House, which belong to the American people and are by law to be kept by the National Archives. Trump returned of the illegally held documents. AND, he submitted to the DOJ a declaration, signed by him and by his lawyers, saying that that was it–that he had returned all the classified materials in his possession. And then they found out that this was, in fact, a lie. And so they raided his place. AFTER HE FALSELY CLAIMED THAT HE HAD TURNED EVERYTHING OVER. After they made a request and he failed to fulfill it. After he persisted in the illegal behavior. They did this based on intelligence that he still had such documents in his possession. Making this false claim is itself illegal and something for which he could and should go to prison.
And anyone who has private possession of the most sensitive secret documents of the United States–ones that, if revealed, could, for example, betray our agents abroad–has no right to privacy if the government becomes aware of this illegal possession. Obviously. Do you really seriously think that someone who has stolen a list of U.S. agents in Russia should be fine if he or she has stored them in his or her son’s bedroom closet? Seriously? That’s just cuckoo. But that’s the kind of stuff that gets these kind of classifications. They asked nicely, which is weird in itself, given that he was in illegal possession of such secret documents. He failed to comply. He is a traitor to our country. What he did is breathtakingly dangerous to our security. And it is extremely illegal. Very, very seriously illegal, as serious as it gets. It’s mind-boggling that anyone is actually making excuses for this.
And now it has come to light that 14 documents with classified markings, including some top secret ones, have gone missing entirely, leaving only their folders behind. This is just appalling.
Correction:
The Obama and Clinton presidential records were turned over to the National Archives which then remanded some of them to their respective Presidential Libraries. As such, they have always been, since the tenures of these presidents, under the legal control and in the possession an agency of the United States, not under the control and in the possession of the former presidents.
Correction:
Trump was not “following their instructions” the instructions given him by the DOJ. The Department asked for all presidential documents he had taken from the White House, which belong to the American people and are by law to be kept by the National Archives. Trump returned SOME of the documents that he was illegally holding. Then, he submitted to the DOJ a declaration, signed by him and by his lawyers, saying that that was it–that he had returned ALL the presidential documents in his possession. And then they found out that this was, in fact, a lie; that he still retained many documents; and that some of the documents he still retained were classified, some of them at the highest levels of classification. So, he obstructed the DOJ’s efforts to regain on the part of the government documents belonging to the government, some of them highly sensitive.
Does April ever read the newspapers, or does she rely on Fox and OAN and Newsmax??
Is April aware that Trump is a serial liar, and a racist, and an insurrectionist and seditionist, and a traitor?
From the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2016 election, volume five:
“the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election…Manafort’s presence on the Campaign and proximity to Trump created opportunities for Russian intelligence services to exert influence over, and acquire confidential information on, the Trump Campaign. Taken as a whole, Manafort’s highlevel access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat…Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow’s intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process…While the GRU and WikiLeaks were releasing hacked documents, the Trump Campaign sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects. Staff on the Trump Campaign sought advance notice about WikiLeaks releases, created messaging strategies to promote and share the materials in anticipation of and following their release, and encouraged further leaks. The Trump Campaign publicly undermined the attribution of the hack-and-leak campaign to Russia and was indifferent to whether it and WikiLeaks were furthering a Russian election interference effort.”
Click to access report_volume5.pdf
From The Washington Post, two days ago:
“Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them…Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.”
“… the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8…Among the 100-plus classified documents taken in August, some were marked ‘HCS,’ a category of highly classified government information that refers to ‘HUMINT Control Systems,’ which are systems used to protect intelligence gathered from secret human sources, according to a court filing.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/trump-nuclear-documents/
Trump is a traitor to the Constitution and the rule of law and he is a clear and present danger to the American democratic republic.
Guess what that makes those who still support and defend him?
Not a trick question.
Yvonne
Obviously some people don’t like reading the truth about their hero because it is so hurtful.
Ha ha ha ha.
I assure you gentle people that I do read the papers (though the Post and Times are not favorites) and I listen to many different TV and radio stations—some far into the night. I have also seen a lot of the stuff you have written here.
Your issues are that you do not like the man or his personality or what he did as a playboy. I get it. That does not bother me. I liked his policies and his strength and they were very effective. He was sharp and knew how to get things done…and fast. He also knew where the skeletons were buried but unfortunately, found more than he planned. He knows the families and the control they have over DC.
He has been out of office for 2 years, yet the media and you have a huge case of TDS. You cannot stop! Yet what is happening now is beyond imagination and the DOJ (yes, I think they are part of the Democratic party) and the FBI (Biden’s gestapo) is in the tank and corrupted from the top down. Those departments leek information to the media who fly with it and create stories around them. I can’t say many good things about the FDA, CDC or WHO either.
I recall that Hillary had her server stuff in a bathroom at her house. Comey said that it was tracked and top-secret info relayed to our enemies. He refused to prosecute.
I will believe what the super investigators say about what is truly top-secret stuff. I would NEVER trust this administration or the DOJ.
April,
Did you know that the head of the FBI was selected by Trump?
Trump has more than one home, he might have more documents stored at these other locations? Who knows what information was copied and stored on computers or thumb drives. In all of our recent history and that includes Nixon, I don’t recall a former president doing what Trump has done, absconding with top secret documents on his departure from the White House. What a horrible human being on every possible level of his being.
Traitor Trump also owns 16 golf courses around the world and some of the classified documents may have ended up in Dubai, Indonesia, Scotland, or Ireland.
Or, more likely, Moscow. See my note, below, when it comes out of moderation.
Speaking of golf courses, the FBI should prolly check Ivana’s casket for classified documents. She was pretty classy, after all.
Ivana probably isn’t in the casket. Its stuffed with gold and classified documents that Traitor Trump didn’t have time to ship to his master, rasPutin, so he hid it there and had her body dumped in shark infested waters.
Or maybe Trump buried them in Ivana’s casket when he buried his ex-wife at the 1 hole on his Bedminster Golf Course! Have you ever seen the pictures of Ivana’s grave??? OMG! My dog buried in my backyard has a nicer, more respectful gravesite!!! And my dogs grave stone IS BIGGER!! It’s a disgrace!
The answer is “ego, money and power.”
My first thought was that he stole the secret documents to sell them to other countries or their operatives, some of which would pay millions for them. My second thought was that he could use them to destroy and malign his enemies which includes everyone in the world who does not bow down to him, crosses him, or thinks differently than him. After watching legal experts on CNN analyzing yesterday’s decision of the federal judge to grant Trump’s request for a master to examine the documents taken in the search of Mar-a-Lago, I would add that one person said that he could have done it just for the sake of showing them off to friends and admirers. That would feed his ego but it is more likely that he had many wrongful reasons to steal the classified and other governmental documents.
No matter how the tale is twisted — he had no legitimate reason to steal the documents and bring them to Mar-a-Lago in the first place. Nor did he have any legitimate reason not to return them when asked or when he was served with a subpoena to do so, The search warrant was not only justified, but it was absolutely necessary to prevent him from hiding the documents or copying them,
The question remains, How many of those classified documents has he copied or hidden and still remain in his corrupt little hands?
Not sure precisely how many documents are in his corrupt little hands, but we can probably calculate the maximum number based on the size of his fingers.
I’d say maybe two or three max in each hand, but since one hand is always making the OK sign , that just leaves one hand free, which means probably 3 documents max.
How many has he already sold?
If he liked to wave around memorabilia, he would have kept the love letters from Kim of Notth Korea. Pictures of him embracing Putin. But names of secret agents? Nuclear secrets?
Exactly, Diane
He DID keep those Kim Jong Un love letters!!! And he didn’t have authority to take those either!!!
When the news of the search of documents at Mara Lago broke, the DOJ attempted to tell us that this wasn’t about the documents themselves, but how they were handled and kept from the National Archives. The media basically ignored that take. This still remains the distinction between Biden’s faux pas and Trumps intentional action. Trump’s recent comments about how we was still President when he arrived at Mara Lago before noon was an attempt to justify his ability to keep his documents since he had them at his resort before he Biden was officially president. There appears to be little effort to actually talk about why Trump is under investigation and some keep repeating that finding the Biden documents will keep Trump from being prosecuted. The obstruction represents the legal jeopardy, not the documents.
Well said, Paul. Trump fought to keep the documents. First he said they were planted by the FBI. Then he said they were his personal property. Then he said he had declassified them. Then he sued to block the FBI from repossessing them. He spent months in court trying to retain them.
Biden turned them over to the Archives at once.
The seemingly empty files are not really empty.
That’s just the latest stealth documents technology.
Invisible documents are less likely to be stolen in the first place because a potential thief probably won’t take a folder that appears to be empty. And even if the apparently empty folders are stolen (perhaps because they were mixed in with nonempty folders), the stealth documents are much less likely to be read since they are invisible and can only be seen and read with the aid of a special high tech machine .
Hope that helps.
Doc-a-lago
Doc-a-lago
Docs to go!
After Trump leaves town
You know
What was traded to MBS for a 2 Billion dollar investment with Jared?
I didn’t think of Jared before, but Traitor Trump did put Jared in charge of just about everything to solve the world’s problems, when Jared was working in the White House, maybe the traitor also put Jared in charge of stealing, selling, and smuggling confidential information to interested foreign parties.
Gee. Wonder what 2 billion, with a b, buys these days.
Trump intended to do one thing that is the sole motivator: Sell to the highest bidder. So what do you think might have been going on when he hosted the LIV golf tournament that is funded by Saudi Arabia?
Random thoughts…
Why? Because it’s another “Nobody can tell me what I can and can’t do” moment.
Why? To show off at dinner parties (seriously)
Why? To frame and hang in all his residences
What? Who investigates the empty folders? Is that the special master? FBI? CIA? Florida police?
And, for the conspiracy theorists – – If there are microchips in vaccines and one can use outer space lasers to track people, you’d think the big old government would do the same with Top Secret documents (in fact, why don’t they do that?)
Why did ExPres…?
Because he could. To show he can stick it to “the man”
and NO checks and balances anymore in U.S.
Public Education is (was) the last example and microcosm of a true democracy in action. Education is a systems thing but now there is no longer a system of a democratic model in public education.
There are no “checks and balances” regardless of what the Constitution states. And, that’s Local education, not just a fed system of checks an dbalances.
The democrats may have they seats, but “they’ have the executive voice (why does that man daily headlines), the legislature (again, power through a big microphone, not votes), AND the JUDICIAL as we saw yesterday.
And, the loudest State voices that get all the media are the disaster of governors in Texas, Florida and then Missouri and others.
We are playing by old rules in a social media, 15 minute news cycle, leadership by quip and rally-worthy shout out phrase influence over people who think news is clicking on their internet platform to the Yahoo headline or “that” news station.
“Top American counterintelligence officials warned every C.I.A. station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed,”
The CIA has the list and the dates these recruited informants were arrested or killed. And for sure, the DOJ has that list and those dates too and has already connected all the dots revealing that the increase in arrests and killings of these intelligence assets will match Trump’s term in the White House up to now.
Maybe with the January 6 House Committee resumes its hearings, we’ll learn those details, too.
If that list ever becomes public, Traitor Trump will probably blame Obama and Biden while lying that it wasn’t him. The traitor may say, they waited for me to be in the White House before they sold that classified information to America’s enemies so I’d be blamed. He’ll start to hold more hate rallies for the red necks that worship him where he’ll repeat how he’s being framed.
As I believed then as I do today, The Orange Troglodyte has been a direct Russian asset, way more than just a useful idiot.
I have a note in moderation about this very matter.
Today, Raw Story told us more about Barre Seid, the source of Leonard Leo’s new $1.6 bil. which will be aimed at putting more men like Trump and Clarence Thomas in charge of the U.S. Raw Story reports that Seid gave money to Hillsdale College and allegedly, he gave $20 mil to get George Mason public University law school named after Scalia. The article tells readers about Seid’s friend, Frank Buckley, a private college professor who called Sotomayer a stupid Latino.
Seid is an indicator that money makes a person into a horrible human being.
There was no need for further evidence that women who vote Republican are stupid. Never the less, Gym Jordan provided more proof. He told GOP candidates not to shy away from banning women’s rights.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/19/trump-first-moscow-trip-215842/
Vladimir’s Asset Orange, aka The Teflon Don, first went to Moscow as a special guest of the Russian ambassador and the KGB in 1987? Why? Flash forward a few years. Trump had used three quarters of a billion dollars from his father (“I started with a small loan from my father,” he says) to make a splash in real estate. But because he was an idiot businessman, he spent enormous amounts of money building white elephant casinos in Atlantic City (hoping thereby to bilk people out of money). These were a bust. He had to borrow heavily from his father to remain afloat. It didn’t work. He went bankrupt. No American bank would lend to him. He had hundreds of millions in construction loans coming due. So, he went back to Moscow. And suddenly, Deutsche Bank, which had millions in deposits from Russian mobsters around Putin, decided that it would be a great idea TO MAKE A BILLION-DOLLAR LOAN TO THE BANKRUPT GUY. Because that’s what bankers look for in a loan prospect. They want to loan as much as possible to bankrupt people who have failed in their businesses. Of course. Recently, many years later, Deutsche execs involved with Trump and Russia have taken to jumping out of high windows, you know, the way doctors did all over Russia when they opposed Putin’s Covid plans. And suddenly Russians started showing up in the U.S. with suitcases of cash with which to buy condos and houses from Trump. And Russian mobsters were renting from him in Trump Tower. And both Erik and Don Jr. were telling people that the Trump Organization had no problemo with cash because they were “rolling in money from the Russians.” And then Trump decided to run for president. And Vladimir spent billions of rubles on a social media disinformation campaign to get him elected, a campaign detailed in a report by the REPUBLICAN-LED Senate Intelligence Committee. And candidate Trump called on his Russian pals TO STEAL THE EMAILS OF HIS OPPONENT, which they complied in doing. And then, when he was president, Trump paid his debt by
Continually calling for the US to get out of NATO
Alienating US allies
Dividing the country as never since the Civil War
Unilaterally, and against the will of his Joint Chiefs and Secretary of Defense, withdrawing from Syria and leaving to Assad and the Russians
Denying that Russia meddled in the 2016 election
Withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty, which allowed the US and Russia to fly over one another’s territories to do surveillance to ensure compliance with arms treaties
Withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF
Doing 6 and 7, above, at the very time when Putin was developing and getting read to deploy next-generation hypersonic nuclear weapons
withholding military aid from Ukraine
OK. If it looks like a POS, smells like a POS, was left by an animal like a POS, it’s probably a POS.
So, how has the US responded to this? Suppose that I had told you that this was my outline for the history of a character in a novel I was writing. And suppose I told you that this character carried piles of classified documents away from the White House. WHAT WOULD YOU THINK HE WAS DOIGN WITH THEM?
Duh
Of course, the proper response to such a character is to grant him use of a special master to delay his ever being prosecuting until such time as he can become president again, right?
Trump is a traitor. Of this there is no doubt whatsoever. He PUBLICALLY called upon an enemy of the United States to conduct espionage and steal and publish an opponent’s emails, which they did. And then there is the phone call to Zelenski, and then there is this:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-revealed-highly-classified-information-to-russian-foreign-minister-and-ambassador/2017/05/15/530c172a-3960-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html
And then in 2020 and 2021, he carried out MULTIPLE concurrent attempts to overthrow the incoming government of the United States. And then there are these classified documents, illegally held, many of which have gone missing, leaving only their folders behind.
All this is more than enough for the man to be prosecuted as a traitor (yes, as a traitor, he aided and abetted enemies of the United States in doing these things, in addition to committing sedition and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding in several different ways). But it gets worse. Much worse. I doesn’t get much worse than revealing sources and techniques of U.S. agents abroad. And given his history, it may well be that this is precisely what he did.
Again, I have a long note about this in moderation. It’s breathtaking that this man hasn’t been arrested yet. Are we idiots here? The guys in the Kremlin must be laughing heartily.
As the judge’s decision granting Trump his Special Master shows, there are two legal systems in the United States. I like SomeDAM’s characterization of these as the Just Us System and the Justice System. Pretty much captures it.
People who are powerful and wealthy, e.g. Trump, can get away with breathtakingly egregious crimes, up to and including treason, whereas “little people”–well, if you are a poor black man selling single cigarettes on a street corner, police can kill you and get away with it. And you are some mentally challenged person from Podunk who answered his call to come stop the incoming government from taking office, the changes are that you have already been arrested and given prison time. Trump claimed that he could shoot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue, and people would still vote for him. And he can discriminate against black people and get away with it. And he can commit numerous acts of rape and get away with it. And he can run a fake university and get away with it. And he can run a fake charity and get away with it. And he can bilk supporters for legal fees that aren’t used for legal defense and get away with it. And he can obstruct official proceedings and commit sedition and TREASON and get away with it. Over and over and over again, . . .
the Teflon Don slides, leaving behind him a trail of slime
Is there any low low enough that people in his party and on major rightwing news networks won’t continue defending him? The man stole and lied about having returned documents that put our nation in grave danger (that’s why they are classified as they were). Enemies could now have our deepest secrets, including the names of sources of human intelligence, at peril to their lives. And yet people continue defending him. It’s shocking. To whatever depth he sinks, his toadies will follow. That’s what happens with cults, isn’t it?
There comes a point where it doesn’t matter what Glorious Leader does, however awful, however barbaric, however evil.
That is what I thought, too. Proof is essential and probably impossible to discover.
I skipped to the bottom and glad that I did…
What an Idiot!
Anyway, Now I’d like you to do an “honest” assessment of Joe Biden.
I mean it’s not as if Joe is a Multi-millionaire or owns multiple homes and has made a 50 year career out of Politics?!
Money???
Joe is connected to foreign governments and payoffs through his Crackhead loser son Hunter…
Ever hear of Tony Bobulinski?
How about Ashley’s diary?
Near double digit inflation?
Open Borders with people from all over the world strolling into our Nation Unvetted
Including terrorists!
Yeah, but you keep a suspicious eye on Trump…. That’s what’s best for America….
Again….IDIOT!
Hey Dianne, You must have really upset someone in the Charter sphere because these troll meisters sound scared.
Something I wrote mst have been posted on a Trumper site.