[cheese_van]

I'm ok with this decision.

In my 3 decades experience of being responsible for handling and storing classified, including comsec material, no one goes to jail for mishandling classified. The only exceptions to this case might be personnel who fall under UCMJ as the military does things differently - and I have seen that. All others? Civilians? Might lose their job, might be censured, might lose a promotion opportunity - but no one goes to jail.

In fact, the only time jail is threatened, is when the incident is IN ADDITION to other charges, often related to espionage.

Frankly, the cases of people accidentally mishandling classified, accidentally taking it home, improper storage etc. are very, very, common and are simply dismissed with minor (or major) implications but never imprisonment.

The violation's charges are so subject to selective (and subjective use) that I would be uncomfortable with selectively employing it in cases so fraught with partisan politics.

[rootusrootus]

Mishandling without intent is quite different. AFAIK the DOJ has evidence of intent in this case. If he had just cooperated with the national archives and the FBI like every other president before him it would have been nothing more than a footnote.

[ceejayoz]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/22/...

> In Kansas City, a former FBI analyst pleaded guilty in October to taking home more than 300 classified files or documents, including highly sensitive material about al-Qaeda and an associate of Osama bin Laden. She faces up to 10 years in prison. In Massachusetts, a defense contractor pleaded guilty in 2019 to removing classified national defense information from his office and storing it at home. He got 18 months.

> And in Maryland, Harold Martin, a former government contractor, took home a huge number of hard and digital copies of classified materials — the equivalent of 500 million pages — though he never shared it with anyone. He is midway through a nine-year prison sentence.

"Frankly, the cases of people accidentally mishandling classified, accidentally taking it home, improper storage etc. are very, very, common and are simply dismissed with minor (or major) implications but never imprisonment."

It's alleged that Trump knowingly kept and concealed them despite repeated demands to return them. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_...):

> Trump certified that he was returning all the remaining documents on June 3, 2022, but the FBI later obtained evidence that he had intentionally moved documents to hide them from his lawyers and the FBI and thus had not fulfilled the subpoena.