Will the mishandling of classified documents be an issue at the polls?

Prior to the Chinese balloon spotted across the skies of North America and the anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine war, the top political news story out of Washington, DC, was the seemingly unending discovery of classified documents in the possession of former presidents, former vice presidents who are current presidents, and former vice presidents who are aspiring presidents. There are so many classified documents floating around that you might be tempted to believe that the National Archives are empty (which is very far from the truth). 

The classified document scramble all began when the FBI raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence on Aug. 23, 2022, to retrieve classified records it knew Trump possessed but would not return. Two more classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago in early December. Around the same time, a series of classified documents were also discovered in President Joe Biden’s unofficial office and at his home between Nov. 2, 2022, and Jan. 20, 2023. More classified documents were then found in former Vice President Mike Pence’s home between Jan. 18 and Feb. 10, 2023.

A persistent problem

The original discovery was novel and newsworthy because of Trump’s refusal to turn over the documents (which he seems to have intentionally taken with him), which prompted the FBI raid. However, the problem of current and former presidents, vice presidents and political appointees mishandling classified records is not a new one. In fact, former government officials discover and return such records with shocking regularity.

This has been an ongoing issue since the Ronald Regan administration – and it only became a problem then because it was the first administration subject to the Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 (before the PRA, presidential records were handled as personal records of the president). Since 1978, presidential records are considered property of the US Archives.

Inattention to protocols

So why is this such a persistent problem?  Part of it has to do with the handling of classified documents. National security officials go to great lengths to protect the intelligence they document, particularly anything related to “sources and methods” of intelligence gathering. But once intelligence reports are delivered to the White House, the secure chain of custody is broken. Elected officials and political appointees have access to top-secret information, and while these officials have security clearances, they are not always well-versed in security protocols. This problem is exacerbated at the end of an administration when the packing up of documents is frequently left to staff with no familiarity with such protocols.

‘Overclassification’ is growing

Many contend that inattention to secrecy protocols is only part of the problem—they point to a phenomenon known as “overclassification” as another cause. Too many people have the authority to designate documents as top-secret. As a result, many designated documents do not have national security value but have been classified because they contain information that is embarrassing or politically damaging. As a result, officials may leave a secure premises with documents that do not contain actual top-secret information. 

Matthew Connelly, a Columbia University professor and author of The Declassification Engine has documented the growth of the national security state from its origin in World War II to today.  Overclassification has only become worse over time, and the Obama administration designated more documents as classified than any other. Executive Order 13526 — an Obama-era executive action that prescribed a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information — has been blamed as a catalyst for overclassification, though both Trump and Biden retained the Executive Order.

Is this an issue for voters?

So, elected officials are not as careful with secret information as the intelligence community and classification is sometimes overused in order to hide embarrassing information.  Are Americans really concerned by the mishandling of classified documents?  Or more importantly, will it impact how they vote in November 2024?

According to some polls, people are concerned about this issue:

• In a Jan. 24, 2023, NBC poll conducted around the time of the last Biden document discovery, 67% of respondents indicated that the Biden and Trump discoveries were “totally concerning.”
• Just a week later, on Feb. 1, a Monmouth College poll showed that 67% of respondents were either very concerned or somewhat concerned that the discovered documents would pose a national security threat if they fell into the wrong hands. Again, the numbers are nearly identical between Trump and Biden. In that same poll, however, 80% of respondents believed that Trump knew he had classified documents, while 58% believed Biden knew.
• Immediately following the Mar-a-Lago raid, half of those surveyed in a Quinnipiac College poll believed that Trump should be prosecuted for retaining classified documents.

All that said, will this issue swing votes in 2024? The picture is muddled but does not indicate that the disclosures have seriously hurt Biden or Trump. This may be because both of them already had abysmal favorability ratings — they were unpopular prior to the document discovery and continue to be unpopular after:

• Since the first revelations regarding Biden in early November 2022, his numbers have remained low but have not trended down. In public polls conducted in the week following each discovery, the president’s favorability ratings ranged between 38% and 47%, with most surveys falling between 40% and 45%. While these are not encouraging numbers for reelection, his numbers did not drop because of the document discoveries.
• In a poll conducted after the second discovery of documents at the Mar-A-Lago raid, Trump’s favorability rating fell to its lowest point since 2015. But was this due to the discoveries? Probably not. The poll in question was conducted immediately after Trump called for terminating the Constitution so he could be reinstated as president. Trump’s behavior clearly offended voters, as 51% of those who took part in the poll believed that Trump should be disqualified from running again for having made this suggestion.

Conclusion

Mishandling of classified documents is not a new problem, nor is it likely to be fixed anytime soon. Voters are concerned about these security breaches, but we will have to wait for a breach by an elected official who is held in higher esteem to reach any conclusions about whether voters will punish their elected officials at the polls for mishandling classified documents.

With contributions from Fed Hall. Federal Hall Policy Advisors, LLC, is a boutique government affairs firms founded in 2017 in Washington, D.C.