If as Presidents, Obama and Bush declassified docs and kept them as secure as Trump did, I have no problem with it.
Hillary wasn’t a president and had zero power to declassify anything in order to keep it.
But if you listen to Bill Barr and the legal anal-ysts and all the rest, you’re not allowed to have classified info. If you took documents, it’s a crime, it’s that simple. Strict liability. It’s absurd. And it was absurb when they were all applying it to Trump. Which is Levin’s point. And why all of these guys are quiet now.
Even if they aren’t declassified I have no problem with ex-presidents keeping their clearances and holding classified documents. However, they must be treated properly: stored in a safe with alarms and access records and regularly inventoried like all other classified docs. You don’t keep them in a box next to the Corvette. Also no “only copies” so that the document is hidden. The original source must keep a copy.
Why stop at the President/VP level? What about all these cabinet officers (even Kissenger), Senators, House members, former heads of the FBI/CIA?