Trump Had More Than 300 Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago

[BumRushDaShow]

28. I expect that the members of the National Security Council

would probably had the authority to access the materials.

In general, routine chain of custody has a procedure and process within any federal agency that requires it for evidence collection and/or information management (from my experience before retiring from a federal agency with regulatory authority), so anything related to national security would have those highest levels of information access and document control.

I remember early on during Obama's first term when an IRS employee had been fired for actually accessing and "reading/reviewing" various tax filings in IRS's data system, without those returns being part of their assigned workload. I.,e., the system had an access log for who logged in when, and what was accessed.

Removal of 13-Year Employee Upheld by Court

The Internal Revenue takes accessing taxpayer databases without an official business purpose seriously. The first offense can–and does–lead to removal. This 13-year federal employee was fired and the court upholds the removal.


By Susan McGuire Smith July 30, 2009 6:22 AM


Yet another employee of the Internal Revenue Service has learned the hard way that the agency has no tolerance for its employees accessing taxpayer databases without an official business purpose. (McLeod v. Department of the Treasury, C.A.F.C. No. 2008-3335 (nonprecedential), 6/17/09)

In this latest case, a Tax Examining Technician with a good 13-year employment record nevertheless was fired for accessing the agency’s taxpayer database without official reason or authorization on 15 separate occasions over several years. (Opinion p. 2)

The database is IDRS, the Integrated Data Retrieval System. IRS refers to the offense as UNAX, unauthorized access and inspection of taxpayer records. The agency demonstrated that McLeod went to the annual agency training sessions that outline the requirements and the seriousness of the offense.

The court’s characterization that the offense is “treated very seriously by the IRS…” is an understatement since the agency’s table of penalties calls for removal on the first offense unless the individual taxpayer has given consent. (p. 2)

(snip)

https://www.fedsmith.com/2009/07/30/removal-13year-employee-upheld-by-court/

Similarly, there was a GAO investigation in the above with a report that released a few months ago -

Hundreds of IRS employees wrongfully accessed taxpayer information over last 10 years

Jory Heckman@jheckmanWFED
May 19, 2022 5:27 pm


Several hundred IRS employees over the past decade violated the agency’s policies around unauthorized access to sensitive taxpayer information.

Sensitive taxpayer information obtained by a news outlet last year led the Government Accountability Office, at a senator’s request, to conduct such a review.

GAO, in its report, found that the IRS completed nearly 1,700 investigations of alleged willful unauthorized access of tax data by employees between fiscal 2012 and 2021.

Of those investigations, the IRS determined that in 462 cases — 27% of cases — the employee in question violated the agency’s policy on unauthorized access to taxpayer records.

(snip)

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/agency-oversight/2022/05/hundreds-of-irs-employees-wrongfully-accessed-taxpayer-information-over-last-10-years/

And I know there are different levels of what is considered "Sensitive" info which the tax returns would be and that is down on the lower levels when compared to info that is "Classified/Top Secret".

So I would speculate that there are multiple national security database systems that are NOT connected anywhere on the internet, and house this info, and those classified systems are encrypted, biometrically accessed (whether via an access card or literal biometric scan), and have an extraordinary amount of logging of activity for them.

It's possible that those types of documents were "watermarked" on the electronic file as "Classified" / "Top Secret" in the database itself so when printed, they would have the watermark already on them (including any other required ancillary tracking number) vs printing out a document and manually stamping it with an ink stamp.