I’ve read that many of the Top Secret folders discovered at Mar-a-Lago were empty. What are the ramifications of this? Where are the documents now? Did Trump hide them? Sell them? Give them away?
I’m finding this much more troublesome than the discovered documents. At least they are in safe hands now.
In answer to your questions, at this point, we just don’t know.
I don’t think a lot of people are thinking about the fact that Trump had control over these documents for the entirety of his presidency and a year and a half beyond. He could have been passing them around like Christmas presents for all this time.
It’s common knowledge now that Trump took a lot of these TS/SCI documents to the private residence in the White House. Jared and Ivanka come by for dinner. Did Trump pass some of these empty folder documents to them during the visit? Who would know? How many trips did Jared make to Saudi Arabia? To China? To Israel? How many trips did Trump himself make to functions where he met privately with Putin? Trump is the most transactional person I’ve ever encountered, so I don’t have difficulty imagining Trump making lots of quid pro quo deals.
I think the ramifications are deep and scary as can be. DOJ will be busy for years chasing down all the damage done due to this mess. In the meantime, another consequence is that the USA is now radioactive in the world of spy craft. No one will be sharing their deepest intelligence with us for quite some time.
Who’s to say if the folders started out empty, or are only empty now? I hope we find out, and I hope one day that Trump is shown that the laws in this country apply to everybody.
(I’m assuming that laws do, of course. I could be really wrong.)
I posted about this in the bigger thread about the raid, but there’s nothing special about a folder with a classified cover sheet stapled to it. The guidance on handling classified materials barely mentions folders, and folders aren’t required for anything. Cover sheets are required for any classified material removed from GSA approved storage (say, a safe) unless they are “in use.” That is to say, in a SCIF, you can remove classified documents from a safe and keep them on your desk (open storage) as long as they have a cover sheet. If you’re sitting at your desk and actively using them you can remove the cover sheet. That’s it. That’s all the guidance says.
A folder with a cover sheet attached is a convenient way to satisfy this rule, although in my experience we used paper clips or staples and I never asked why. It’s entirely plausible, and I’d say probable given my experience, that the SCIF at Mar-a-lago had a bunch of these folders that aides would throw printouts of classified briefings into when groups of VIPS came through. When the briefings were over the contents would be removed and burned or shredded (extreme shredding) and the empty folders put back into the supply closet. The list also says that some folders said something along the lines of “Return to military aide,” which is line with this theory. Everyone would be briefed that the folder(s) had to be turned back in after the briefing and it would be some aide’s job to make sure they were all collected.
Now… we don’t know, I’ll concede. It could be that these are a different kind of folder, maybe they had specific titles or numbering or something. Maybe there are signs of pages having been ripped out of these. Who knows. But given that MAL used to have a SCIF, and folders with classified cover sheets are a standard office item in SCIFs, unless we get more information I wouldn’t be worrying about this.
I also said in that other thread that if Trump wanted to destroy the documents to hide them he could have destroyed the folders too. If he wanted to sell them he’d have made copies so they wouldn’t be “missing.” Like all things Trump, nothing about this really makes sense.
Lastly, I’ll say that while I think the folders are irrelevant, they shouldn’t distract from the, you know, actual classified documents found. Those are serious, and Trump should do jail time for all of the charges outlined in the search warrant. But that doesn’t mean we need to throw out common sense about folders.
Exactly.
You or me, if we were so corrupt as to pass TS/SCI intelligence to hostile foreign powers, we’d take pics of it and transmit it on a thumb drive, returning the actual documents as required.
Trump? I can just envision him tearing a bunch of material out of a folder to give to Jared, then tossing the now-empty folder into a box in the corner, which then left the private residence for Mar-a-Lago months or years later.
I feel you are giving Trump’s cognitive capacity far too much credit.
I’ll defer to your superior knowledge of these matters, but I can’t disregard what I know of Trump.
I think the best thing we can say at this point is, we have no idea, but that Trump has put our national security at serious risk is beyond debate.
No argument there. This is really me being like a lawyer watching a crime drama. I’m watching the internet speculate about these folders and it’s just like… gah, they’re just folders. Like, for all Trump cared about proper storage of classified materials anything listed on that list could have, at one time, had classified material in it. Shoeboxes, briefcases, unlabeled folders, Abe Lincoln’s hat. There’s just nothing about stapling a cover sheet to a folder that indicates something is “missing” from it.
Sure, some or all of these empty folders may have been a standard office item; de facto cover sheets waiting for some classified documents to be put inside them. So why did Trump still have them? When the SCIF at Mar-a-Lago was decommissioned, I’d expect all those empty “top secret” folders to be taken away. Did Trump think that as an ex-president he’d be generating new classified documents and he wanted some classified folders to be ready for when he did so?
I think Trump grabbed everything he could get away with on his way out of the White House; from nuclear secret to the menus from state dinners. Just throw them in boxes and worry about it later. An empty folder had the words “top secret” on it? That looks important, throw it in a box.
So, yes, an empty folder does not mean that some document is unaccounted for; but at best it shows the disgracefully cavalier attitude Trump has for sensitive government information.
Think of the fun he could have sending his mistresses notes in a “top secret” folder. The possibilities are endless.
Likewise, if Trump hid or sold or destroyed the contents, why would he not also hide or sell or destroy the folders?
We’re not dealing with a rational individual, and nothing about this makes sense.
Fun fact – you can actually download the TS coversheet, print off a bunch of copies, and staple them to manila folders. There’s no law or policy stopping you.
To me the news that the search found a number of empty Top Secret folders is further weight behind the theory that Trump kept classified documents because he is disorganised, careless, impetuous and idiotic rather than because of any more nefarious reason.
As @steronz helpfully points out, the existence of empty folders doesn’t mean secret documents have been nefariously taken. But their continued existence at this late stage of the game shows, at the least, lack of any form of tidiness, care, organisation, or even self preservation.
Exactly. We don’t know whether the empty folders are significant. We can draw no conclusions. We have no idea what happened to the materials they contained.
But Trump, also, has no idea. And that’s proof of mishandling the materials, full stop.
I think the empty folders are a distraction. We have no idea how many documents he gave away (or had stolen) with the folders included. That number might dwarf the empty folders.
It’s still a useful exercise to try to identify and track the documents that were in the empty folders, if possible.
I understand (from my vast experience watching old “Mission Impossible” episodes on TV), that it is possible to make a record of a document using a portable handheld device that stores images, without ever having to remove the original document itself.
This modern technology amazes me! Joseph Nicéphore Niépce would be proud.
During my Canadian military days (for two years of which I was a classified docs custodian) classified file covers were just another piece of stationary when empty and unused.
But the real deal - god help you if you lose track of it and don’t properly account for it in accordance with the regulations.