Classified documents found in the former president's home; classified documents found in the current president's home.  Let the comparisons and finger-pointing begin.

            Was information withheld to affect the 2022 midterm election??  Was information released to affect the 2022 midterm election?  Why were FBI agents involved in one search and personal attorneys permitted to search in the other case?

            The special councils have been appointed so let's get on with it.

            As lawyers and government officials begin their claims that this paper or that paper wasn't really confidential or top secret, I wonder, if they weren't top secret, why they were labeled as such.

            Yes, there are times when documents need to be confidential and top secret.  Especially those that might affect our nation's security.      But, is that top secret and confidential classification being used for other purposes?  Are there things being hidden from the people that shouldn't be?         

According to reports, we spend $18 billion protecting the classification system and only about $102 million on declassification efforts.  That doesn't bode well for transparency efforts.

            Starting back in the 1990s, the number of documents federal agencies classify annually has increased 15-fold and now exceeds a trillion pages a year.  In 2004, one congressman mocked the federal classification system as incomprehensibly complex and so bloated it often doesn't distinguish between the critically important and the comically irrelevant.

            A year later the New York Times reported that federal agencies were classifying documents at the rate of 125 a minute as they create new categories of semi-secrets bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."  And, it seems like it is getting worse each year.

            What secrecy-shrouding federal abuses are being hidden from the people?  What potential illegal government activities are being shielded from the public?  Maybe some, maybe none – how do we know?  This so-called iron curtain of secrecy shielded by Democrats and Republicans must be explained and, where appropriate, removed.

            Remember the National Security Agency's surveillance crime spree back in the last decade that included targeting Americans searching the web for "suspicious stuff"?  Please define "suspicious stuff" to the people.  What is suspicious today may not be suspicious tomorrow.  Are the rules updated accordingly or is that information classified forever?

            In the government's definition of top secret and classified, are files that don't pertain to national security filed along with items that might tarnish a foe's political image and held in secrecy until an appropriate time for someone to explode it on the public? 

            According to the National Archives, classified national security information is information created or received by an agency of the federal government or a government contractor that would damage national security if improperly released. Since 1940, the President has managed the system of classifying information by executive order.

            Does the information retrieved fit that definition?  If so, then the law was broken.

            I hope that the investigations will reveal the truth and that the word "transparency" will become more than just a buzzword in future elections.

            Are government crimes being kept secret and are our elected officials perpetuating cover-ups?

            Transparency is more than just a word.