More info that would have been helpful years ago

During his four years in office, Trump never strictly followed the rules and customs for handling sensitive government documents, according to 14 officials from his administration, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss what they called Trump’s mishandling of classified information.

[...]

He took transcripts of his calls with foreign leaders as well as photos and charts used in his intelligence briefings to his private residence with no explanation. He demanded that letters he exchanged with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un be kept close at hand so he could show them off to visitors. Documents that would ordinarily be kept under lock and key mingled with piles of newspaper articles in Trump’s living quarters and in a dining room that he used as an informal office.

  WaPo

Well, shouldn't there be some consequences for the people who knew this? Particularly those who were responsible for securing the documents?

Senior aides said they tried for years to impose some order on the flow of classified information in the White House — with little success.

I have to wonder how hard they tried. Somewhere else I'd heard that these people claimed he would sometimes ask, "Can I keep this?" about the documents, and they'd just let him. The proper answer was "no".

Fuckers one and all.

A longtime adviser who still sees Trump regularly described him as a “pack rat” and a “hoarder.” Several former aides said Trump spent his time in office flouting classification rules and intimidating staffers who might try to take secret intelligence material away from him.

[...]

One former official said some classified documents in the residence were visible to anyone passing by.

[...]

Although it was not necessarily improper for a president to take classified information to the residence to continue working and White House staffers are accustomed to adjusting to any president’s working style and preference, it was not always clear that Trump needed the documents for official business, another former official said.

Yes, and in previous administrations, as they should be, those documents were kept track of and returned to their proper place.

Several former officials said they knew that the system, or lack of one, for handling classified information carried risks. Sensitive documents could get lost. Intelligence might fall into the hands of people not authorized to see it.

But Trump intimidated his aides. “They didn’t challenge him,” one former official said.

[...]

In August 2017, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who had served as secretary of homeland security, tried to set things straight.

Kelly issued written guidance requiring that any document sent to the president for his review first be cleared by the staff secretary, the official in charge of keeping track of documents, as well as the chief of staff. Kelly also set up rules for what to do after Trump had seen a document.

[...]

It was the staff secretary’s job to mark the document “President Has Seen” and submit it to the Office of Records Management. “This process is vital for compliance with the Presidential Records Act,” the guidance states, referring to the law that makes White House records the property of the federal government.

You know what? Kelly could have notified Congress or some other oversight, or even the public, that Trump wasn't complying.

The letters [Trump] exchanged with Kim, for example, were not stored in the White House space customarily used for sensitive documents but were kept where aides could quickly retrieve them at Trump’s request.

Hysterical. I can just picture Trump sending a runner to bring the "love letters" from Kim every time he wanted to show them off.

In the absence of higher authority backing them up, personnel in the staff secretary’s office could not be expected to remove documents from the president’s possession, another former aide said. “They would have gotten their heads cut off by the president if they tried to take things from him.”

Only figuratively. And then they could have reported the issue. Or they could have reported it before putting their necks on the chopping block. They didn't. They went along. In violation of the Records Act.

[After the 2020 election, with] the White House expected to hand over all original, relevant documents to the Archives, senior administration officials held several conversations about missing materials, former officials said.

[...]

There was no exact list of everything that had gone missing, one of the former officials said. But “we knew the places he usually worked and the other senior people who might have had documents,” the officials said.

[...]

In late December, Lyons, who had tried to do that, stepped down from his position as staff secretary and was not replaced.

[...]

Eventually, with his efforts to overturn the election results gaining little to no traction in statehouses or courts, Trump began the process of packing up. It was in those harried final days that aides said he and others put briefing books, gifts, news clippings and other possessions into boxes, some in the residence and others in different locations throughout the White House.

Other materials already were in boxes.

[...]

“The plan should have been to figure out what all he had, what needed to go back, and to get relevant senior administration officials to help the staff secretary’s office in getting as much as they could back. That didn’t happen,” the former official said. “There was no plan to do it because Derek was gone, and people were looking for other jobs and trying to survive day by day.”

A fucking nightmare administration.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.