I’m not too surprised about either Trump or Biden winding up with classified material in their houses. I’ve worked with classified material myself, and very often one is tempted to take material home for legitimate work or study. Being restricted in a Special Compartmented Facility is particularly bad, they are usually cramped, uncomfortable places to work, far away from your office, that are a pain in the ass to get in and out of to take a leak, grab a coffee or a smoke. I needed to memorize four 4-digit codes to get from the parking lot at one place I worked to where I needed to go to do my job; One for the main entrance, another for the building, a third for the Security area, and a fourth for the project SCIF I was working in. And I was a two-pack-a-day smoker in those days!

Very often I was tempted to carry a manual, a map, or some coding sheets across a boundary so I could work in more comfort or with my non-classified reference books. I couldn’t carry anything out of the building because a guard could always ask to look in your briefcase (although none ever did). Incidentally, most of the classified material I worked with was way over-classified. I can’t think of anything I worked with which a Soviet spook would have really wanted or needed to look at. I had Top Secret, Special Compartmented clearances, but (in my opinion) I never worked with any material that justified it.

So I’m not surprised that Trump or Biden might have taken some homework home with them. After all, is some rent-a-cop going to challenge the President of the United States and demand to look in his laptop, or his briefcase? Not likely. I’m sure there are bureaucrats all over Washington today looking all over their houses and offices for stuff they might have innocently but illegally taken out of a SCIF to work on.

Of course, the issue here is not just possession, but intent, and the efforts made to obstruct an investigation. And I have a feeling that if any crimes were committed or contemplated, we’ll never know now. Biden will no doubt be blamed, and Trump will no doubt get away with them.