Former FBI agent suggests 'nefarious intent' in Trump’s claims he 'declassified' the docs — here’s why
Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa is disputing Donald Trump's excuse that he "declassified" everything upon leaving office.
For the past several weeks, allies of the former president have been excusing away his possession of classified intelligence he stole from the White House and took with him back his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Laws don't show a distinction between classified and unclassified information that is taken from the government. It's all a crime.
Still, one of the main excuses from Trump's team is that he declassified everything upon leaving office. His appointed National Archives aide, Kash Patel, falsely claimed that the action of Trump taking them out of the White House automatically declassified them.
This excuse isn't working for Rangappa.
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"That Trump is sticking with his 'declassification' defense is mind-boggling in light of below," she said citing specifics about the abbreviations that were seen on the outer folders of the classified documents. HCS-P, which was on some of the outer folders. It signifies intelligence derived from sensitive human sources
"Why on earth would he 'secretly' declassify" that? asked Rangappa arguing there's no reason to declassify something like that, compartmentalized intelligence, and spy satellite products. "It frankly suggests that he had nefarious intent."
She went on to tell MSNBC that seeing such folders and the abbreviations on them gave her "heart palpitations."
The government usually strikes fear into the hearts and minds of anyone dealing with such high-level information. Rangappa noted that if she left her office for lunch, she would have to lock up anything classified she was looking at. Federal employees who left classified folders on their desks at night, even if they were in locked offices, would be penalized.
"Of course, if I were to remove any kind of restricted information from a SCIF, for example, I would have been fired and prosecuted," she explained. "Just to see this volume of classified information there is staggering and I'll add that I'm very shocked that Trump continues to stick by this declassification defense of his which doesn't have merit. But even so, these are documents that you can tell from the covers are derived from human intelligence. They're compartmentalized information, why would you declassify that? Those documents can put people in danger so it actually raises more questions than it answers by him continuing to assert that defense."
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