well, from purely legal point of view, this looks like a hard case to prosecute:
1. were the documents classified? Presidents have a very broad authority to declassify documents and the argument coming out from the Trump legal team is that all these documents had been declassified by the former POTUS while in office.
2. how did the documents come into the former POTUS possession? One of the requirements for the infraction is that it was a wilful act to take the documents, but based on facts coming out, it seems the GAO just packed up all of the former POTUS items and shipped them to his residence, so it would seem difficult to prove he took them wilfully.
3. Did the former POTUS wilfully retain classified documents?This would probably be difficult to prove since DOJ would have to overcome numerous hurdles:
3.1 Did Trump know he had classified documents? The documents were stored in archive boxes shipped directly from the WH. Doubtful Trump ever personally looked in the boxes to see what was in there;
3.2 Did Trump wilfully retain the classified documents? Even if Trump knew about the documents, he apparently had a "good faith" belief he had de-classified them, so he was not wilfully retaining classified documents. The 2nd part to this is that his legal team apparently fully cooperated with the DOJ previously, returning all the documents they asked for and securing the rest.
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