Trump claims presidents can declassify documents ‘by thinking about it’
Donald Trump has claimed presidents can declassify documents by the power of thought alone.
Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, the former US president said: “Different people say different things but as I understand it, if you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.
“Because you’re sending it to Mara-Lago or wherever you’re sending it. There doesn’t have to be a process. There can be a process, but there doesn’t have to be.
“You’re the president – you make that decision.”
The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago in August. Prosecutors have said about 100 documents found at Trump’s Florida resort were marked classified. Some were labeled top secret. Some reportedly concerned nuclear weapons.
Many observers think an indictment is looming. Trump has attempted to delay the investigation but on Wednesday appeals judges said it could continue while a document review goes on.
The judge carrying out the review, Raymond Dearie, this week told Trump lawyers they must provide evidence documents in question were declassified – or he will presume they were not.
Dearie said: “I guess my view of it is, you can’t have your cake and eat it.”
Trump has consistently claimed he declassified the documents by presidential fiat, whether physically, by taking them to the White House residence, verbally or, he now claims, by the power of telepathy alone.
“In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified,” he told Hannity.
Experts doubt it. In August, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a secrecy specialist, told the New York Times: “Hypothetical questions like ‘What if a president thinks to himself that something is declassified? Does that change its status?’ are so speculative that their practical meaning is negligible.
“It’s a logical mess. The system is not meant to be deployed in such an arbitrary fashion.”
Trump also told Hannity “there was nothing that was hiding” when boxes were packed to be taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House in Washington.
The former president said he did not pack any boxes himself.