Trumps lawyers are telling us they have no defense in the secret document investigation.

[VMA131Marine]

53. Your analogy is inappropriate

Plus the only reason we are having this conversation is because Trump could have ordered the documents declassified while he was President whereas any other person could not as they don’t have that authority. I think you would agree that if you or I had been caught in possession of the documents Trump had we would not be able to question that they were properly classified. The executive branch has exclusive authority to classify information for national security purposes and that is not subject to challenge (cf. Reality Winner).

Trump’s only defense to holding properly labeled classified documents is that he declassified them while he was still president but if there is no record of that action then they were not properly declassified. It’s likely that Trump, being the narcissist he is, kept the documents because he wanted to feel like he still had some power over the government. If the documents had really been declassified they would have been available to anyone, and therefore useless to him.