Sorry, I wasn't explicit--I was talking about elected officials who only have access to classified information because they won their election. They don't go through anything like what a normal government employee goes through to obtain a security clearance.  There's no extensive background checks conducted on congressmen and senators before they are allowed to view classified information.

Trump won the election, and therefore automatically gained the right to view anything he wanted to view regardless of classification. Whatever security clearance he had (literally or figuratively) was only connected to his position as president, therefore when he ceased to become president he also lost his security clearance blanket authorization to possess and view classified documents.  Any access to classified information after he leaves office is at the discretion of whoever the current president may be.

Obviously many people get their clearance as part of the process of getting hired, but they didn't get the clearance automatically because they got hired--the clearance was a separate process that stands independent from the job.  Therefore when they leave the job they retain the clearance.

A security clearance is not based on "need to know".  That's a question related to viewing specific documents.

I went back and edited my post to clarify that I wasn't literally talking about a security clearance, I'm talking about his authorization to view classified information. Obviously as long as he was president he had blanket authorization to view anything he wanted to simply because he was president, and nobody could say anything otherwise.  The question is about what happens when he is no longer president.

Regardless, going back to the appeals court decision about a special master, they already said that it was an irrelevant question because even if he had authority to view the documents he couldn't show a need to know and therefore shouldn't have had them anyway.  

I wouldn't be too sure.  

I use the internet, and this forum, as a way to practice arguing while being polite.  I'm a bit different IRL.

I'm not sure how or why one would maintain that assumption regarding anything Trump after the last 9 years.  My perception is probably marred by some of my personal experiences with the DOJ and the Feds.  But when the Trump/Russia thing started going down many of the smart posters on this web-zone dug in and showed, to my and many other's satisfaction that it was bullshit.  Some of those, vastly smarter, more experienced, and more knowledgeable SMEs than I are in this thread.  It took the left side of the country 3 years to come to the same conclusion, and even then some still think Trump/Russia is a real thing.

So, I caution you to check your assumptions and be prepared to be wrong.  Moreso, because I've been around long enough to see political prosecutions start to fall apart, and the Jack Smith case looks to be unraveling.  

I know exactly fuck-all about clearances and access to secret documents.  But you are arguing with people in this thread who have LIFETIMES  of experience working with such information and with such access.  People who also dislike Trump, but must defend him from what they see as a naked political prosecution brought by party opponents. You do you, but I think it foolish to ever disregard folks like Cincinnattus.  

I do know how to read and apply a statute and understand how the constitution vests authority in the executive.  On that basis alone I think your analysis is flawed.  The determination doesn't come from appointees and the administrative state.  The determination is contingent upon the authority.  Authority is granted by the constitution not some administrative rule or faceless mid-level apparatchick.  

The older gentlemen, like myself, well remember that, with the possible exception of Carter, all recent presidents have acted in legally questionable ways.  Any of them could have been prosecuted by a creative lawyer with the administration backing their play, but they were not.  Take a few minutes and try and consider why that is.  If your only reason is Mr. Trump is the worstest, I refer you back to Trump/Russia, which was bullshit.  

Thanks for the clarification.  Wanted to make sure no-one would be pissing on the family vault in the ancestral homelands because of some dumb internet thingy.

The problem with your post is that prior presidents all retained their clearances as do most heads of important offices and agencies. It was a HUGE problem for Trump because these cunts were all using their clearances to hurt him behind the scenes after Obama left.

Did the past presidents retain their "clearance" or did the current Presidents choose to provide them with classified briefings for various reasons?

The distinction between presidents and any other government officials is critical.

I’ll do you a solid:

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/484/518/

“Page 484 U. S. 527
The President, after all, is the "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States." U.S.Const., Art. II, § 2. His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security and to determine whether an individual is sufficiently trustworthy to occupy a position in the Executive Branch that will give that person access to such information flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant. See Cafeteria Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886, 367 U. S. 890 (1961). “



And you didnt “miss a question” you completely ignored it as you replied to my post but refused to address in the questions asked.  I’ll do you another solid and give you a chance to answer them again.  

From page 19 of this thread:



Your reply to the above was to laugh at Dershowitz and suggest Andrew McCarthy.

Saying that one "retains a clearance when they leave the job" because they got it through a "separate process" shows such a breathtaking lack of understanding of the entire process there's no point in engaging with someone who believes such absurdity.

@MaxxII Ok, thanks for at least answering the question.

I did see that, it was the only part I thought might remotely be relevant.  And it certainly would be relevant, if the question was regarding the President's authority regarding classification.  But it isn't.  Literally NOBODY says Trump did not have the power to declassify anything he wanted, while he was President.  Not even the craziest most wacko lefty commie socialist ANTIFA BLM whatever Trump hater says that.

The only question being argued on the topic of classification is whether the President has to prove he actually declassified something for it to be true.  Trump has made no claim other than "I did it in my mind".  He hasn't claimed he told anybody, and he certainly hasn't said he wrote it down anywhere.

There are people here saying it's enough that he says he had the thought, or the evidence of it happening is the boxes being moved out of the White House.

I, and every legal analyst I respect, think that's ridiculous.  I'm not a lawyer so I'm not going to try to collect the citations to include in a court filing making the case, but I did find where this question came before the 5th Circuit appeals court recently (panel of 3 judges), and they very curtly dismissed it as nonsense.  They basically said "you say it happened, but you have provided no evidence it happened, so it didn't happen.  But even if it did, it still doesn't matter because he can show no need to have those documents in the first place.  So GTFO of here."

I also offered the Presidential Records Act where it says the President SHALL make sure every official act of his office is documented.

I have yet to see anybody provide anything that makes the case for how those judges wrong, other than unsubstantiated claims (repeated many times in various threads).  If I'm a troll for not accepting that, then I guess I need to revise my definition of troll.

(The question is also not HOW the President has to document his declassification of something, only WHETHER he must do it in some way of his choosing.  I think it's well established that it is at the very least not clear how Trump would have had to document any last minute declassification.
But it 's obvious that when he wanted to make sure it happened, as he did regarding the Crossfire Hurricane documents, he/his team made sure to leave no doubt--they wrote it up in an executive order and he signed it right before he left office.)



Thanks for the repost.

I'm unclear as to the facts on this one.  Have you seen something authoritative that has established this?

I was trying to figure out why nobody is talking about this, even at Fox News (who I'm quite confident would like to talk about anything they can substantiate that favors Trump's side of the story).  I think it might be because none of this is new--even though it might have been redacted in the court documents, here's a story from CNN in 2022 talking about it:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/10/politics/trump-documents-shipping-gsa/index.html

Here's a Bloomberg story that I think was the first reporting about 100 pages of emails related to all of it, correspondence between Trump's people and GSA (might be a paywall):

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-05/trump-says-feds-packed-top-secret-mar-a-lago-documents-foia-says-they-didn-t

Here's a WP story from a week ago going through all of it--they also reported on the GSA thing in 2022:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/04/30/trump-documents-case-rumor-false/

An excerpt:

-------

After Trump (grudgingly) left office, he was allotted funding to run a transition office, a process that involved the GSA. Because he rejected his election loss for so long, his team was slow to set things up. Shortly before Biden was inaugurated, Vice President Mike Pence’s team chose a GSA-managed space in Crystal City for its office. Trump’s team asked whether it could be there, too.

Former presidents are allowed six months of funding for their transitions. So, with a hard deadline of July 21, Trump’s team operated out of the GSA building in Crystal City. One staffer informed the GSA that “as many as 100 boxes of presidential gifts would be stored at the Crystal City office,” The Post reported, based on an email sent to the GSA.

“[T]he Crystal City office was crammed with leftover stuff from the Trump White House with no apparent organization and little knowledge of what was even there,” our report noted.

July 21 arrived, and the Crystal City office still had a bunch of stuff in it. Trump’s staff put material into boxes and boxes on pallets. Two pallets finally arrived at Mar-a-Lago on Sept. 14. The other four pallets (including two that had been repacked after a pallet became oversized) went to a nearby storage facility.

In requesting material to pack up Crystal City, Trump staffer Desiree Thompson Sayle asked for 30 bankers’ boxes, the small white boxes featured in photos in the Trump indictment. There were also 15 small cardboard boxes, 30 medium-size ones and 10 large ones. The pallets that ended up at Mar-a-Lago were a mix of these types of boxes.

Compare this with Kelly’s presentation. These were not obviously “the boxes that ended up containing papers with ‘classified markings,' ” though some may have been. Regardless, the material in Crystal City was not held or managed by the GSA; instead, it was material that was part of Trump’s post-presidential office. Trump also brought several boxes directly to Mar-a-Lago after he left office.

Interestingly, a member of Trump’s team provided a letter to the GSA (at the agency’s request) attesting that “the items being shipped from Arlington, VA to Palm Beach, FL are required to wind down the Office of the Former President or are items that are property of the Federal Government” — stipulations required for the move to be paid for by transition funds.

-------




Again, there are a lot of facts to establish before this question can be discussed.  From what I can figure out, basically this story started with a factual statement (that technically the evidence is not EXACTLY as it was when removed during the raid).

Then, ignoring any related details, MAGA Media just ran with the narrative "evidence has been tampered with, manipulated, altered, etc." and all the legal "experts" reacted based on worst case assumptions.

If evidence really was tampered with, altered, manipulated, etc. to the point that it meets whatever legal standard exists where it becomes a serious problem, then I would certainly be on the side of "this is a serious problem!"

BUT...

If you really care about the truth, feel free to read the source document for yourself.  Remember--the only source for these claims is statements made by the government in a court filing, so there isn't much to argue about regarding the known information so far:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653/gov.uscourts.flsd.648653.522.0.pdf

It's only 13 pages, and the relevant section begins on page 6.  You can read it in a few minutes.

For the TL/DR crowd--they describe what has happened to the boxes since they were seized, who has handled them, who has done what with them, etc.  The ONLY notable part of the entire document is that they volunteer (without being asked first) that things are not EXACTLY as they were originally, because the order of documents might have changed for various innocuous reasons.  However, the contents of each box are exactly as they were originally, other than that placeholders were substituted for classified documents that needed to be stored separately so as to follow security protocols properly.

Fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine: A rule under which evidence that is the direct result of illegal conduct on the part of an official is inadmissible in a criminal trial against the victim of the conduct.

I assume it's obvious why I would be dubious so far about claims that all of this meets that definition.

Do with all that as you wish, I hope I have satisfied your demands and maybe positively affected your perception of me a little...?

I'm probably wasting my time, but let's try this one more time.

Scenario 1: You get hired for a government job.  Because you got hired for the job, you automatically get a security clearance.  Show up, get to work, get a paycheck, get a security clearance.  No other paperwork, no background check, absolutely nothing else happens other than getting hired for the job and going to work.  If you quit/get fired, you automatically lose the security clearance at the end of your last day of work.

Scenario 2: You get offered a government job, but first as a condition of employment, you have to get a security clearance.  You do a bunch of paperwork, very serious people do a bunch of background checking, interviews, and whatever else is part of their process, and if they eventually come back and say "you are denied", you don't go to work and keep job hunting.  If they say "here's your security clearance", you go to work.  If you decide to quit, you still have a valid active security clearance, because you went through all that paperwork and background checks in addition to anything you did to get the original job offer, so you can go apply for another job that requires a security clearance, and you can say "you should hire me because I already have the security clearance you require, as opposed to the other applicants who don't have it yet and have to go through that process before you know if you can put them to work".
 
Now, @Josh please tell the class which of those is more accurate for a government employee.

Then tell us which is more accurate for an elected official, including the President.

Since I obviously have a breathtaking lack of understanding, I defer to your obviously superior expertise to make it clear for the rest of us.

Other members can and will speak for themselves, however, I'll go out on a limb here and say the answer to your question, "which is more accurate", is "neither", because neither option accurately describes the presidential situation.

Really, it doesn't even cover the vetting/clearance process for WH staff, especially those installed at the direction of the president.  See 'Unlimited Access' by Gary Aldrich.  It was an eye-opener, to say the least.

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. As in you don’t even know what words to use to describe the concepts.

You have clearly never had any exposure to the field of cleared work in any way, nor have you even read anything credible on the topic. You are spouting talking points you don’t even understand.

You sound like a kindergarten student trying to explain quantum physics, except this field is so simple even the dumbest security manager on the planet can manage it, and there are some real dumbfucks in that field.

I’m not going to bother to educate you. People have been trying to educate you over and over in this thread and others and you clearly are not capable of learning anything.

Sorry if the question wasn't clear--I know most people have better things to do than spend a bunch of time reading all 21 pages to get the context of everything.

This isn't a thread about security clearances. All the details are irrelevent to the question being discussed.  The generalized and grossly oversimplified scenario was an attempt to make the question clear.

It's just a really simple question--a President obviously has the right to view any classified document he wants while in office.  Does anything about that change when he leaves office?  People are claiming nothing changes, so therefore Trump did nothing wrong and this whole case is a sham.  It's kinda weird how nobody in the government understands that, but I suppose it's always possible that they could be misinformed.

Anyway, according to @Josh I have been educated about this question repeatedly in this thread.  I'm sorry I'm so dense, but somehow I missed it.  Every legal expert I've ever read on the subject says the access to classified information is attached to the office, not the person.  But evidently Josh thinks I should ignore all that and instead listen to random anonymous people on the Internet who think that they just need to make claims and there's no need to provide any supporting documentation.

Josh has chosen one of the favorite tactics of effective internet discourse, the good ol' ad hominem logical fallacy.  It's unfortunate, because if I'm so wrong and he's so right it should be very easy for him to provide a link or two so I could learn a thing or two, but I guess I'll just have to keep Googling until I finally find some expert who explains why I'm so wrong.

/snark off and going to bed, I'll let @Low_Country pick this up on the morning shift.

Or you could do your own research instead of pretending to be an expert on something you know nothing about.

I have a link for derivative training.

I did my whole training list last week.  

lol

Man, is that the truth!

Those who need inner reflection

What's going on is you keep moving the goalposts.  

If security clearance isn't relevant, why did you bring it up in your hypothetical?

Now you're dumping that and going off on another tangent.  

I would go a step beyond and posit that if we see a prosecution of a political figure by the DOJ our default position should be suspicion.

It's not to say that all of them are a political hit job, but boy howdy there's a whole fucking bunch of them that are nothing but. The prosecution of Jonathan Edwards fell apart in front of the jury. The prosecution of Ted Stevens violated all kinds of rules. Bob McDonnell in Virginia was prosecuted to pave the way for sleazy Terry to become governor on yet again more novel prosecutorial theories with plenty of prosecutorial misconduct along the way to generate their preferred outcome. That conviction was overturned unanimously by the USSC.

Take the investigation and prosecution of Menendez from NJ. I'm certain he's a shitbag of the first order...but so is Biden as it is abundantly clear by ANY even remotely honest examination of the facts we know that the DOJ completely refuses to engage on or deal with. Which begs the question of why, exactly, they want to go after Menendez. It's not just corruption because there are far more blatant examples of corruption. It's some as yet unknown power dynamic as sure as the Lord made little green apples.

This bullshit about no one being above the law while they come up with entirely novel prosecutions of Trump while literally saying that Biden is too much of a well meaning old man who can't remember shit to be prosecuted on far clearer violations than they allege on Trump ought to be plenty of evidence on the face that this has nothing to do with principle. This is power. Nothing more.

History tells us that there are no limits in the game of power, that the DOJ will enthusiastically break the law and violate every ethical principle there is to get to their preferred outcome.

Abuse of power is the rule, not the exception, when we're talking about the DOJ.

...and if one could claim it was by accident, that claim would be rather sketchy when the same administration is prosecuting the guy for having those documents THEY SENT HIM.

Back on topic.

Has the shit judge ruled on the motion for illegal phone seizure? What happened with the fake documents the White House created?

A buddy of mine who used to be in the FBI told me about the Hillary investigation before it was on the news. He said Comey dedicated a hand-selected group to handle it, and that hand-selected group was essentially segregated from the rest of the Bureau.

"Comey is a straight shooter.", he told me.

I responded that it sounded a lot more like Comey had a coverup crew working where they were going to use "need to know" and "classified" to keep whistleblowers from finding out what was actually going on.

He didn't believe me.

At least until Comey made his "no reasonable prosecutor" speech and the details of the investigation came out.

The desire to believe in one's institution is strong.

Now that he's out, he has told me on multiple occasions that I called things better than he could because I didn't have the institutional bias blocking my view.

The FBI's HQ building is named after a cross-dressing pedophile who violated people's civil rights routinely, blackmailed political leaders, took money from mobsters, abused police powers to try and crush political dissidents he didn't like, and probably had scores of people murdered. That's the guy who FOUNDED the FBI. The idea that it's an organization defined by the rank and file FBI agent who takes his oath seriously is fucking laughable because that guy doesn't run shit.

Guys like Hoover and Mark Felt run the FBI and always have. And unless there is significant legislative reform, they always will.

Not always true.  I left one contract for another and lost my Q, even though I had just finished my SF86 stuff a few months before I left.  I had to start the process when I got to my next gig.  It happened to a few people who came from one lab to the next, but some of them came over with a Q....some didn't.  They all worked at the same department in Kentucky, so it wasn't a policy of one lab vs the next.

Thank you for taking the time to recount all of those cases.  

It's a long record of shady shit that most people don't want to believe or fail to consider when they estimate the work of the DOJ in general and the FBI in particular.  

All true.   And once one has seen the absolute dogshit that passes for reports, documentation, and case management from some agents, any presumption of credibility goes out the door.  

Good call on the Hillary investigation and Comey. Unreal how that was handled.  He did get a book deal though, right?

As I understand it, agency heads, presidents and possibly others retained their clearance with the idea that they could be called upon for advice and continuity in policy.

This was a huge problem for Trump when he got in, Obama’s people were still weaponizing the government against him using their clearances. You may remember a stink about him removing at least one of them because of this.

Or, maybe it’s your understanding that is breathtakingly inadequate because you are approaching it from the perspective of a working stiff that is held to different standards and procedures than an elected official?

No.  I know exactly how it works.  If you don't even know what a security clearance is, you can't talk about it intelligently.  He doesn't even know what it is.

Fox News is no friend to Trump.

For people whose clearance is based on the normal process, there are three parts eligibility granted by a background investigation, a need to know normally based on your job and an in place non-disclosure agreement.  What most people refer to as having a clearance is having the eligibility because the second two are not applicable to them at the time.

Unfortunately there is an entire cavalcade of people who received a clearance but by pass the three requirements either by being in an elected or appointed position.  And than you have retired senior GO/FOs and SES of some of the agencies as a benefits of their previous appointment position retain at least limited access, to include a special badge for former DoD SESs and GOFOs to give them unescorted access to the pentagon without having to follow normal visit request requirements

Just like him calling out MAGA Media ,  what is that exactly ?, A few obscure streaming channels and select websites that come up on the 4 th page of a Google search?  You have to search them out to get news from a Right side perspective.  They are out there and they do a good job but people like him saf don't read them .

So what, if anything, changes for a President when he leaves office?

Did I make it in time before Josh told you you’re FOS?

It is very important to note that the prosecutor that went after Governor McDonnell is the very same motherfucker going after Trump.  Hand selected hatchet man.

So fed lawyer didn’t come back and FL troll is still doing his normal shit? Cool.

Why do you think what he said and what I said are incompatible?

Posted elsewhere, (separate threads), but not here:

Classified Records Trial indefinitely postponed

Trial now postponed, Indefinitely!

Thanks Judge Canon.

Attached File

Sure looks like you have been proven correct!

@Dumak

Ignoring the whole "Classified-Documents-in-a-box-in-a-warehouse-shipped-to-Trump" chain of custody issues...
If the documents were manipulated or altered, who did it?
If you cannot show who altered or manipulated the documents he's being charged for...you have a serious chain of custody issue.

Not to forget that the unanimous reversal you mentioned was by Jack Smith, so fuckery is hardly a stretch.

As idiotic as this case is, there's not some massive evidence issue here because the FBI pulled classified docs and put placeholders in their place and maybe possibly some documents got shuffled around in the boxes when they went through them.  That's an extremely weak argument.

I appreciate you noticing.