So….I’ll say MOSTLY, yes, it’s a big deal and we should hold our politicians accountable for mishandling them. If you’re a Democrat, make it clear that you are cross with Hillary and Biden for their behavior. if you’re a Republican, make it clear that you are cross with Trump and Pence. Police your own.
Classified documents can have names in them and people DIE when those names are revealed to the wrong people. It can reveal ‘sources and methods’ even when specific facts on them aren’t interesting unto themselves. Like if I said “Oh, this one room in the Kremlin is purple” in a document, that tells the FSB agent who gets his hand on that document that my source is someone who has been to the room. That narrows his list of potential moles. (that’s a terrible example, please don’t nitpick it, but I think you get the idea).
Now, I will tell you, the NSA (and I presume other intelligence agencies as well) have a pretty substantial problem with overclassifying. It’s WAY easier AND safer to just slap classified on everything rather than actually scrutinize the document. When I briefly worked in the intel space, I was bombarded with training and rules about when to mark things at various levels…and quickly found out that the most common solution was just to slap ‘Confidential’ on literally everything.
It’s likely that a fair bit of the stuff Hillary emailed or that are in Trump/Biden/Pence’s trove of documents are not a big deal. But these are politicians getting briefings. It’s likely there’s ALSO alot of very serious stuff that if it were to fall into the wrong hands could lead to sources being exposed…which would mean their deaths.
So yes, it’s a big deal. And we all need to hold our own team accontable. It’s also true that likely most of it isn’t all that substantial. But there’s certainly going to be SOME juicy stuff mixed in.
BTW – Let’s also differentiate Biden/Pence from Trump/Hillary. The former two voluntarily outed themselves and cooperated. The latter two were belligerent and resisted. But that doesn’t mean Biden/Pence shouldn’t be held accountable for their actions. Remember, plenty of regular people have mishandled classified info and gone to Federal Pound Me In The A—prison for it, even when they did it by mistake. Just because these four are politicians doesn’t mean their should be given a pass.