OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Debate is intensifying over a so-called “standing order” during former President Donald Trump’s administration that could throw a wrench in the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago last week.
Trump’s office argued that all documents taken to the Florida estate were declassified under an order by the then-president.
“As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare the work the next day, often took documents including classified documents to the residence. He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them,” the statement said, according to the Washington Examiner.
“The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the president of the United States,” the statement concluded. “The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat with classification authority delegated by the president needs to approve the declassification is absurd.”
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump argued the documents were “all declassified.”
“Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request,” Trump said in a written statement. “They could have had it anytime they wanted — and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.”
While Trump’s team argued the president can legally implement a blanket declassification policy, liberal lawyer Bradley P. Moss argued he couldn’t.
For those in the back who have not been listening, let me say this one last time. Declassification had to be done and completed for each individual document before noon on 1/2/2021.
No indication Trump made sure that was done for these docs. A verbal statement is not enough. https://t.co/cDjdLacL0p
— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) August 12, 2022
Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, argued on Sunday that then-President Trump had the authority to declassify information.
Below is a transcript of the exchange, via Grabien:
BARTIROMO: Yeah. Kash, you were working with the National Archives to get the proper documents to the mix about the Russia collusion lie. President Trump declassified batches of documents in October 2020 and then again in January 2021. How much of those documents were actually released to the public, how much have we not seen, and how damaging is what we haven’t seen? What can you tell us?
PATEL: Fantastic question, Maria. Yes, President Trump named me his representative to the National Archives months ago, and we’ve been in a bureaucratic battle. As Devin and I have always said to you, we found whole sets of documents we needed out to the American public from Russiagate. We got out about 60 percent. That’s why President Trump made it his mission to declassify and be transparent. In October of 2020, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every Russiagate document and every single Hillary Clinton document. Then on the way out of the White House he issues further declassification orders, declassifying whole sets of documents. And this is a key fact that most Americans are missing. President Trump as a sitting president is a unilateral authority for declassification. He can literally stand over a set of documents and say, ‘These are now declassified,’ and that is done with definitive action immediately.
The fact that the bureaucrats at NARA, who refer — remember, the National Archives are the ones that referred this to the Department of Justice, but they, the same principle, failed to refer Hillary Clinton to the Department of Justice when they got their hands on the classified e-mails from those servers. And switching gears a little bit to the national security officials involved, you know, me as a former national security prosecutor in the National Security Division where this case is being run out of, it’s no surprise that the likes of John Carlin, who was the assistant attorney general for national security who authorized the Russiagate hoax to begin with, is now the number three official at DoJ. And Lisa Monaco is the number two official, who was his superior back then.
These folks, and this is the thing I want to stress, now that this is a, quote-unquote, ongoing FBI counterintelligence investigation, they will come out to the American public and be able to say ongoing CI investigation, you will never be allowed to see the Russiagate docs or any other docs that President Trump lawfully declassified and they will hide it from the public. And Congress has a monumental lift ahead of them come November. They better start subpoenaing these documents immediately and putting these people before the American public. Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have failed in their mission to uphold the law. They have become political hucksters and they are completely destroying our Constitution and putting on a two-tiered system of justice.
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