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Notes -
The warrant does specify the "45 Office," so I think it's pretty clearly leftovers from POTUS work. I don't really see that as a problem; if he needed to look at the black budget or an intel report outside a SCIF, that was his prerogative. The warrant does mention standard safe/alarm/inspection requirements as part of the standing, but I would argue that's moot given the Secret Service presence.
Once he leaves office, things get complicated. Legally, I don't know if presidents are subject to the usual brief/debrief process complete with NDA. Either way, the PRA is very clear that he's supposed to return what he worked on. Practically, uncleared individuals should not hold onto controlled information. The obvious reason is risk of disclosure or espionage. But it's also important to keep a chain of custody and know who has a hard copy at any given time. SCIF ingress/egress procedures are (sometimes frustratingly) complex for this exact reason.
What's strange is that his team halfway complied. See the affidavit--fifteen boxes were returned on Jan 18th "in accordance with the PRA." It's not like they were hiding that they had anything classified, because there was a bunch mixed in to the fifteen boxes. And 200k pages doesn't exactly suggest sentimental keepsakes.
Side question--where'd you see that number? 200k pages would be 80-100 banker's boxes. They didn't seize anything close to that unless the boxes were huge.
Anyway, there are a couple categories in the stuff seized.
Unclassified documents covered under the PRA. Stuff like "3 - potential Presidential record" or "1 - Executive Grant of Clemency re: Roger Jason Stone, Jr." (lol). He was probably obligated to hand these over, but there's no indication of how many he would have wanted to hold onto. I could believe that it was hardheadedness or just an oversight. Either way, not a big deal.
Classified documents, improperly stored. Some of these contain national defense information. I don't know why Trump would think he could keep these, or how he would expect to benefit from doing so. That suggests a mistake--but then why return some and not others?
Unclassified stuff stored with the other categories. I understand this is standard for the warrant type, and that they'll have to give it back, or maybe already have.
We don't know how big each category is, just that all this stuff was mixed together on the premises. I'm of the opinion that it would be both unwise and unseemly to prosecute him on pure PRA grounds. Even if the man admits he did it to flip them the bird, whatever, they have their documents back and it ought to be water under the bridge. But I am much less comfortable with the presence of classified documents.
A Security Classification Guide (SCG) is a document which indicates which parts of a given special access program are classified, and at which level. When new documents are created under that program, they inherit such rules. If a report mentions X, and the SCG says X is Top Secret, then the new document must be marked accordingly. The SCG is also classified at such a level.
Simple budgets can be enough of a risk to be classified. There are two types of special access programs: acknowledged and unacknowledged. Information, including funding sources, for the latter may be heavily restricted. Our rivals would surely like to know that Y branch of the military just spent a few billion on prototypes of platform Z.
There's also the well-trod ground of intelligence sources. I'm not so familiar with that field, but it's arguably more likely that the POTUS would have those lying around.
Sometimes classified documents are long with only a few nuggets of dangerous information. Sometimes they're not. Neither one should be made visible to those without a need to know. Trump had the highest access in the country, and the opportunity to pick up a great number of potentially damaging documents. "TS" is reserved for "exceptionally grave damage to national security." Not everything in a TS document will clear that bar--but how many times do we want to roll the dice?
The real risk isn't "Trump took home the nuclear codes and now we all die." It's closer to "Trump accidentally burns an intel source" or "China beats us to a key technology." My biggest fear is that he uses blanket declassification as a defense--can't charge him then!--at which point everyone and their mother gets to FOIA thousands of pages of military secrets. Even if he did so completely legally I would consider that a tragedy for the country.
In the absence of a smoking gun, like actually selling documents, I still think it would be a poor choice to push charges. However, I will continue to argue against the idea that his withheld documents must be harmless due to the amount or complexity.
Thanks for this, much appreciated!
The "200,000 pages" I was referring to was underspecified Twitter threads declaring his villainy, with the number of pages seemingly used to suggest that this is worse than if it were fewer pages. That was what set my alarm bells for, "wait a second, did he steal something specific that anyone is worried about, or is this just literally an office that didn't get emptied out?". The number apparently comes from this court filing. Per WaPo:
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