Trump claims he had a ‘permanent order’ making it okay to take classified documents #Trump #Claims #Standing #Order #Classified #Docs Welcome to OLASMEDIA TV NEWSThis is what we have for you today:
Former President Donald Trump’s response to the federal raid on his Mar-a-Lago home this week bounced from conspiracy to whataboutism: First, he suggested the FBI could have placed the top-secret material it found in his South Florida home. Then he turned his attention to his predecessor, Barack Obama, who he said had done the same. only worse ― a claim that the National Archives had to debunk on Friday.
Trump now seems to have landed on an old standby, claiming victimization for supposedly doing nothing wrong to begin with. He had already released everything that was taken to Mar-a-Lago, Trump argued on Truth Social, the platform he founded after being kicked off Twitter.
On Friday evening, Trump’s camp sent a statement to Fox News detailing that defense.
“As we can all understand, everyone has to take their work home from time to time. American presidents are no different,” the statement read.
It continued: “To prepare for work the next day, President Trump often took documents, including classified documents, to the residence. He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and brought to the residence were deemed to be released the moment he removed them.”
However, Trump has not held the post of President of the United States for more than 18 months, a point the statement did not seem to address.
Trump Office Statement: As we can all understand, everyone has to take their work home from time to time… He had a standing order that documents taken from the Oval Office and brought to the residence were released as considered. pic.twitter.com/pnTjRnOqif
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 13, 2022
Although presidents can declassify certain informationthere is a formal process for doing this, and it is not clear whether Trump followed it.
In addition, it seems unlikely that he had the authority to release some of what may have been in the documents, such as information about spies and nuclear weapons. The Washington Post reported earlier this week that there was information about the US nuclear arsenal among the materials at Mar-a-Lago. (Trump called the report a “hoax.”)
Presidents are required to hand over documents to the National Archives under the 1978 Presidential Records Act. But the National Archives had reportedly been aware for months that Trump had circumvented those rules; more than a dozen boxes of documents were recovered earlier this year.
Attorney General Merrick Garland suggested this week that authorities searched Trump’s home and office because they had exhausted other options to uncover what appears to be highly sensitive information. According to the unsealed search and seizure warrant, FBI agents took more than 20 boxes of material on Monday along with other items labeled top secret. Some were even described as “miscellaneous classified/TS/SCI documents”, with the abbreviation being used for “sensitive compartmentalized information”. Such information is believed to be viewed in a special, secure facility called a SCIF.
If Trump really had a “permanent order” to release everything he took home, it has not been made public.
Trump allies have argued that the classification status of these materials was likely nothing more than a clerical error — that is, Trump stated that the documents had been declassified, but they were never formally marked that way.
Conservative lawyer Jonathan Turley told Fox News on Friday that the end of Trump’s term was a “very chaotic time” with the attack on the Capitol and “all the controversies”. The Trump administration may not have had time to go through the usual process, he said.
Kash Patel, a top Pentagon employee and Trump adviser, likewise told Breitbart News that the markings have never been updated. Patel claimed he was “there with Trump when he said, ‘We are releasing this information,'” Breitbart reported.
But the rules are there for a reason. A former FBI special agent, Asha Rangappa, explained how the declassification process should work a series of tweets that emphasized the effect it has on national security. The process, she argued, will allow federal agencies to make the appropriate preparations.
“If someone releases information that affects sources and methods, that gives them time to protect them or prepare for a backlash,” Rangappa said.
However, a permanent Trump declassification order would be “insane to try to enforce,” said Bradley Moss, a national security attorney and frequent Trump critic.
“That would mean that every time he had those documents with him, staff officials would have to follow him to the residence to make sure they crossed out the markings and stamped ‘released’ so that other officials, when they saw it, would know.” that they should treat it as released,” Moss said Friday night on MSNBC.
“You can’t release something just for yourself. You declassify it before everything,” added Neal Katyel, who served as acting United States Solicitor General during the Obama years, in the same segment.
Alex Wellerstein, a nuclear historian, said in an interview with Vox that the ranks of classification are believed to correspond to how damaging the information would be to the nation if it were released. It could be very damaging if Trump had a document stating that the US recognizes that Israel has a nuclear arsenal, Wellerstein said as an example. (The US does not officially recognize Israel’s nuclear weapons.)
Whether or not the Mar-a-Lago materials were technically classified or declassified could be an aside, however.
The unsealed warrant revealed that the Justice Department was investigating Trump under various statutes. None of them require the information to be classified, noted former US attorney and legal commentator Barb McQuade in an early Saturday appearance on MSNBC.
“Classification is irrelevant. Government documents relating to national defense should not be withheld from the government upon request for restitution,” said McQuade a tweet. “The injunction obstruction charge suggests Trump was trying to hide what he had.”
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