Retrieved in January 2022
184 unique classified documents
92 secret documents
67 confidential documents
25 top secret documents
ABC news.
Every single one of those highlighted words is completely wrong. Those classifications (which should not have been leaked, of course) come from pencil pushers; that is, hired bureaucrats assigned those classifications to the documents. There is only one person in the land who can officially classify and declassify documents, and that is the President of the United States. He gets that plenary power through the Constitution and the will of We the People, who elected him.
To the extent bureaucrats assign classifications to documents, they do so only through delegated power. No matter how many little red rubber stamps they use to mark up documents, it is the president who has the final say. Not the Department of Justice, not the FBI, and certainly not some soggy little bureaucrats in the National Archives.
In this case, Trump issued a standing order declassifying all documents related to the Russia Hoax. That is enough to override everything else. But even if he hadn’t given a standing order, his plenary power means that, when he acted in a way that effectively declassified the documents, that action had the full force and effect of a verbal order doing so. The power is all his. Because there’s no evidence that Biden tried to re-classify the documents, they are declassified, and everything to the contrary is sheer ignorance or a blatant lie. (This charge of ignorance or dishonesty applies to RINO GOP Sen. Roy Blunt, of course.)
The Mar-a-Lago raid gets stinkier with every passing day, and the media is spinning more frantically. I only hope that Trump’s lawyers and spokespeople are capable and can make the right case both in the court (which has no right to override Trump’s declassification actions) and to the American people.