John Kelly: Trump ‘didn’t believe in the classification system’

Former White House chief of staff John Kelly explained to The Washington Post that his former boss did not understand why America's secrets are classified.

Kelly's comments were included in a Washington Postdeep-dive by reporters Josh Dawsey, Rosalind S. Helderman, Jacqueline Alemany and Devlin Barrett titled, "Trump’s secrets: How a records dispute led the FBI to search Mar-a-Lago."

"A Trump adviser said the former president’s reluctance to relinquish the records stems from his belief that many items created during his term — photos, notes, even a model of Air Force One built to show off a new paint job he had commissioned — are now his personal property, despite a law dating to the 1970s that decreed otherwise," the newspaper reported.

The newspaper interviewed Kelly, who also served as Secretary of Homeland Security and as a four-star Marine Corps general.

“His sense was that the people who are in the intel business are incompetent, and he knew better,” Kelly said. “He didn’t believe in the classification system.”

Former national security adviser John Bolton told the newspaper,“almost nothing would surprise me about what’s in the documents at Mar-a-Lago.”

“People were nervous enough about his lack of concern for classification matters that the briefers typically said, ‘Well, we need to take it back,’” Bolton said. “He’d usually give it back — but sometimes he wouldn’t give it back.”

Read the full report.

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