“Here’s a really important point. I haven’t heard anyone talk about this,” former Republican Congressman and Fox “News” lackey Jason Chaffetz says. “These are documents generated by computers. There’s an argument to be said they already have these documents, these are photocopies. They’re, they’re run off of a printer. You, we didn’t take extra copi– it’s not the only. We have extra copies. The president has the same security clearances he did as President of the United States. … He continues to have that security clearance.”
Well, that’s completely idiotic. The paper on which information is written isn’t classified; the information ON the paper is classified. If you make a copy of a classified document, that doesn’t mean your copy of the information is miraculously unclassified. And Biden essentially revoked Trump’s clearance his first month in office, barring him from receiving any classified briefings, citing Trump’s “eratic behavior.”
What Chaffetz is arguing here is just plain stupid: since the federal government continues to have copies of this information in its computer system–which incidentally may or may not be true; we don’t know all the information–then the copies of the information Trump has aren’t really classified. Which is, of course, not true. People are convicted of copying information and removing it from secure locations. It’s literally a crime.