There’s a difference between “norms” and “protocol with respect to national security information.” I like a maverick. Trump just believes he is above the law, and above you and everyone else. Why you like this man so much is beyond me. He wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.
Otherwise, the gist of it is that SCI and SAP are inventoried and tightly controlled. The material is usually checked out and issued to the appropriate party who has to maintain positive control (sometimes even 2 person) for the duration of its use. Then it is returned and logged as such.
If Trump had declassified it, there would be record of that because each document is logged - they would have taken it out of their inventory.
As mentioned before, my GUESS here is that the White House staff reported to NARA and DOJ that documents were missing that had been checked out, and that’s how NARA suspected he had SAP/SCI at MAL.
Now, I have zero doubt that Trump mishandled information: putting it in stacks with newspapers and such is mishandling it in the strictest sense. I HOPE for his sake that he wasn’t purposefully trying to keep some of it, and that his people just ****ed up, because I really don’t want to see this go criminal for the sake of the country.
