CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS: “[Donald Trump stated that] ‘[Bill Clinton] kept classified recordings in his sock. Did you know about that? They say he left the White House with recordings in his sock, and they found [them] in his sock drawer.’ …
Clinton didn’t leave the White House with the recordings; they were stored in a sock drawer in the White House during Clinton’s tenure.
And they weren’t classified; they were tapes of conversations Clinton had with an author who was working on the president’s oral history…
Trump’s team and its allies have cited this as proof that a president has the authority to determine what is personal record, rather than a presidential one…
‘Under the socks decision — this is a very important decision, they call it the socks decision, because again it had to do with Bill Clinton and his socks — there is no crime,’ Trump said Sunday [October 9, 2022]. ‘You know, there is no crime. It’s not a crime.’
But that same ruling repeatedly notes that this authority pertains to a president’s time in office. It does not deal with a former president removing material with classified markings.”
-Aaron Blake, “Trump’s nonsensical riff on past presidents and classified documents,” washingtonpost.com, October 10, 2022