You haven't posted any holes.

All you did was find something was done improperly and jumped to the conclusion that it must be malice without even considering incompetence or ignorance.

You haven't posted any holes.

All you did was find something was done improperly and jumped to the conclusion that it must be malice without even considering incompetence or ignorance.

The process you are trying to regurgitate is for transferring classified material. 

When classified is couriered outside of its regular storage facility, it must be accompanied by a "sender's" signature showing it's being transferred.  the courier must sign for custody when they get it.  When handed to the recipient, that person must also sign the form, keep a copy, and give the courier the original.

I was a courier for classified whenever i flew to Saudi Arabia.  I signed for it at the tarmac where the C-141 sat waiting for cargo and passengers.  I'd remain on the aircraft as the rest of the passengers arrived.  At that stage, there were two signatures on the form -- the originator's and mine.

When I arrived at the Riyadh airport, a member of my unit already in country would meet me at the aircraft and sign for the material.  At that point, it was no longer my responsibility.

Had I been diverted to a different location due to weather or equipment problems, I would have checked in the material with the base security office, had them sign it in, then I would sign it out before departure.

This process is only to show who had custody when.  It has absolutely nothing to do with the validity of classified markings or it being downgraded.

if you are downgrading a piece of classified material, there's no hand receipt required.  It's still in the same place.

However, if you place it in a burn bag, that bag will be signed for by the classified destruct detail to show you no longer are in custody.

Stop trying to assign reasons for processes you have no idea how they work or why they exist.

Every branch of the military and every agency that handles classified has their own set of forms for transfer, loss and destruction of classified information/material.  if there was one version of the forms we all used, I could show you the actual forms.  Instead, just use Google as you normally would.  Maybe seeing the forms will explain why what you think happens is not what really happens.

yes, i posted holes in your theory that the FBI and other federal agencies were not trained on evidence handling...

You call those holes? Pinholes compared to the gaping breaches in your theory...

You described a chain of custody form for the classified information, this all makes sense, I understand this type of form.

So if you had delivered a document to the president, then there would be a record that the document was released to the president

Wrong.  The White House has their own security personnel who would receive classified information being handed over for the president's custody.

in most cases, the person providing the information to the president would do so in a classified briefing.  copies of the briefing slides and supporting material would be given to the administrative staff who would sign for it it.

If the material was produced by the WH staff, then there's no transfer and no form needed.

and that would cover you for why the document was not returned to where you removed it from, correct? Does the president then just put it in a drawer, burn it, take it home, do whatever he wants with no sort of documentation? Does this high level of detail in the chain of custody taken for classified information go out the window when a president declassifies the material?

Wrong.  For the President or anyone else to have classified in a location that's not designated an approved place to store classified unattended, he would need to ensure someone has control over it at all times.  if he puts it in a drawer, it needs a coversheet to show it's classified.  You don't mingle it with all your other work papers.  I imagine the president's administrative personnel have a safe in which all classified is kept.  When the President needs it, he just asks for them to retrieve it, and they in turn make sure they lock it up when the president is finished with it.

Now that you're switching gear again to declassification, as I told you, once something is declassified, it's no longer in need of protection.  Why would there be?


When it comes to classified information becoming declassified and then becoming accessible to the public, the keeper of the records must have some way of being notified that the document had been declassified and could then be made public. Did Trump declassify the documents and no one bothered to make appropriate notifications?

Wrong.  You're making shit up to fit your made-up idea of how classified is supposed to be handled. 

If you have a Last Will and Testament, and you then change something, how do we know if the old will is the valid one, or if the new one is?  What if someone produces a copy of a new will that the date signed supercedes the previous one?

The courts will only allow an original, signed and witnessed will to be "the will" for a person's estate.  So, any copies of wills are not accepted.  Any original wills dated before the most recent one are not accepted.  The most recent, signed and witnessed original is the official one.  All others are just scrap paper.

There's no record of each and every revision of the person's will, nor are there any previous wills classified as "no longer the most recent," "obsolete" or "void."  You can't go to some government office and view a list of wills to see if the one you have is the most recent.

It's either THE will, or it's not.

How do you revoke a will?  You make a new one and shred the old one.  It's that simple.

When a classified document is no longer classified, there's no longer a need to know why it's not classified.  Only if you as a person looking at it suspects it is classified would there be any reason to care.


The only thing I am trying to do is to understand the process so as to be better able to gauge the validity of Trump's claims that he declassified them.

Half the time you're arguing, it's because you said things that were false, then backtracked saying you didn't word it properly.

Hint:  There's no difference between making a false statement and saying something you believe is true in an inaccurate way.

Both are WrOnG!

I wasn't saying the removal of their security clearances was a theory, I meant the implications. Perhaps I should have explained it better.

yes
how possible that federal investigators are not well trained in evidence handling
you're an officer in HPD and surely you received more than zero training on evidence handling...

Thats a rather silly question. Every agency deals with this, poor training, lack of recurrent training, and just bad employees.

Are you saying that you believe federal agent training is that good? In many other topics here people complain that feds don't know what they are doing all the time.

Thats a rather silly question. Every agency deals with this, poor training, lack of recurrent training, and just bad employees.

Are you saying that you believe federal agent training is that good? In many other topics here people complain that feds don't know what they are doing all the time.

i already stated that for an important case like this (the first time a former president's residence was raided by feds), you are going to want to send your best people...

Wrong.  You're making shit up to fit your made-up idea of how classified is supposed to be handled.

i already stated that for an important case like this (the first time a former president's residence was raided by feds), you are going to want to send your best people...

Desire and reality are not the same thing.

In your years of work experience, have you never seen a good employee make a simple mistake?

Going off CMO's point, the secret service let a crazy many with a knife slip into the white house a few years back. With guarding a current president you are only going to want to use your best peopel right?

Going off CMO's point, the secret service let a crazy many with a knife slip into the white house a few years back. With guarding a current president you are only going to want to use your best peopel right?

simple mistakes were made at mar a lago?
searching melania and barron's bedrooms?
bringing along TS covers that are never brought to raids like this?
staging pictures with said covers after strewing the evidence all over the place to make it appear that's how it was stored?
not keeping logs of the evidence correctly?
not putting evidence back in the same order or box that it was in?
there are more, but my lunch is pau

and you say there are "gaping breeches" in my theory, yet you say that "simple mistakes" were made???

Contrary to what you seem to be thinking, I am not saying what did happen, I am only pointing out to you that you are jumping to conclusions in claiming it was corrupt.

Let me pose this question to you, using your own reasoning. If you were going to go frame the president for something, would you put the smartest guys on it, not ones who would make so many mistakes?

Details on this?
 I know a few instances where people jumped the fence.  Are the people at the security check point the best?  I say the best because being on POTUS detail means your the best.  Compare this to detail for a lower level government employee like assistant secretary of XYZ.  POTUS detail is the top detail to achieve.  Now circle back and compare this to the guys running the metal detectors at the WH.  Running a metal detector is much different from a security detail as there are many more hazards to look out for. Plus you're not in a controlled environment like the WH.  They try their best to control it, but it's not like the WH control.  I remember when Barry was hiking and his detail went ahead of him on the trail and stopped hikers coming back toward him and searched them.  They were told why they're being searched and they were Ok with it.  Even got a pic with him.

so you are just adding nuance?