Trump is already 'joking' about taking classified documents again

There is a fear that after President Donald Trump was able to get away with taking classified documents in 2021, he will do it again upon leaving office.

Writing for Zeteo, Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez said that sources claimed he has "joked" about the scheme to staff, even flagging some documents he's thinking of pilfering.

“This one would be good!” Trump said within the last year while holding up one document, a source said. They were quick to note it was a "joke."

Unlike in the past, there is a fear that Trump's Department of Justice could be complicit, "or at least lay the groundwork for him to abscond with classified government property once again."

The sources told the reporters that Trump has spoken about making classified documents available for his presidential library, while other times he talks about wanting to "take them" to Mar-a-Lago for his own private use.

"In some of these instances, legal or political advisers have reminded him that if he wants to do that, remember to declassify them before departing the White House," said Zeteo.

Trump said after he was caught refusing to return the papers to the government in 2021 to 2023 that he "declassified" the documents. There was no paper trail for that, however. It was never litigated in court because a Trump-appointed justice ruled that special prosecutor Jack Smith was not legally appointed.

Under the Presidential Records Act, all documents must be retained to be cataloged. Those documents can then be given to presidential libraries. Plenty of presidential libraries feature handwritten notes, letters from the president to friends or family and major documents. The National Archives cited nearly 800,000 items given to presidential libraries and documents that are scanned and available online. Their effort to catalog such documents is ongoing and they're currently at work on the database for former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover.

In recently established Presidential libraries, these documents can also be in electronic form. Researchers will also find that each library contains a rich audiovisual and photographic record of a President at work. Taken together, these historical materials form the substantive record of public policy in each administration," the Archives site says.

But in Trump's case, three aides reported in a 2022 hearing him say, “They’re mine!"

Zeteo characterized it as further underscoring "the abject lawlessness of the second Trump administration — and also his desire to corruptly wield federal power to his own personal ends, including for score-settling and nursed grudges of the past."

Despite the documents case continuing to be on hold, Trump keeps telling his lawyers to get “my” classified documents back, a Rolling Stone report said.

Trump's aides would refer to Trump's large bankers boxes of documents he had hidden in his bedroom, bathroom and basement at Mar-a-Lago as his "Beautiful Mind" boxes, the new book by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan said. It's a reference to the film about schizophrenic math prodigy John Nash.

“The boxes were sometimes stacked so high that they left impressions in the carpet when moved," the book Regime Change says.

Zeteo noted that one detail in the documents case was a text message conversation in which they claimed: “Anything that’s not the beautiful mind paper boxes can definitely go to storage.”

At one point, the book recalls Trump turning Jared Kushner’s old office “into an all-purpose hoarder space packed with papers, paintings, tchotchkes, MAGA paraphernalia and various gifts he couldn’t bear to throw away.”

This time around, Zeteo said that government sources told them Trump's administration remains "committ[ed] to wrecking the Presidential Records Act." Already, the Office of Legal Counsel has tried to unmake the law by issuing a "memo" calling the law "unconstitutional." It claims that “the president need not further comply with its dictates.”

The American Historical Association has already filed a lawsuit.

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