Posted on 01/18/2023 2:42:18 AM PST by Libloather
False
Context Under an Obama-era executive order that retained a Bush-era order, vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify documents - just like presidents. There is some ambiguity about whether they have the power to order departments and agencies to declassify material deemed secret by those agencies, but the scope of this power has never been tested. In January 2023, after news broke that federal documents pertaining to U.S. President Joe Biden's tenure as vice president were uncovered at his former office and Delaware home, critics pushed the erroneous notion that he didn't have the authority, while serving under Obama, to declassify those files. Nonetheless, the matter was irrelevant to the U.S. Department of Justice's review of Biden's handling of such files.
In January 2023, U.S. President Joe Biden faced scrutiny after news emerged that government classified files were found in a private office he used after serving as vice president in Barack Obama's administration, as well as in a storage container at his Delaware home. The reports came just months after the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago property to obtain hundreds of classified documents there.
Comparisons between the two cases ran rampant. Among the alleged differences, according to some social media users, was that Biden, in his position as vice president, did not have the authority to declassify government documents, while Trump, as president, did.
"[Trump] as President had the unlimited power to declassify whereas VP Biden didn't," journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, for example.
However, the claim that federal law does not give vice presidents the power to declassify government documents, and reserves that authority for presidents, is false.
Under a 2009 Obama-era executive order titled "Classified National Security Information" the vice president does have the power to declassify documents while they're in office.
(Excerpt) Read more at snopes.com ...
Since when did Obama-era executive orders become Federal law?
Under the EO, the VP can only declassify documents that the VP classified.
The VP cannot declassify something the POTUS classified.
Snopes lies by omission, context, distortion and outright on political things.
Snopes is so tricky.
Snopes is run by a hard-Leftist. A bitter woman whose husband left her a while back.
Snopes: The VP has the power to store Classified Documents in his garage as long as the garage is locked...
Whether the VP had the power or not is not the question. He is not claiming he did declassify anything. He doesn’t seem to know anything about them.
He is a demented fool tool foisted on this country.
We are in need of a huge do over...
Correct. And neither the Pres. nor VP can declassify (or classify) anything after they leave office.
Just a note, Harry Truman did not even know we had an A bomb until after FDR died. A VP does not have access to any and all classified documents unless given to him.
“A VP does not have access to any and all classified documents unless given to him.”
Supposedly
Snopes, like the FBI, is not a reliable source of information.
DemoMarxist domestic enemies of the USA have infiltrated and poisoned just about everything in our government, our corporations, education, the media, social media, but Snopes is 100% legit, is that it?
That’s how it reads. I guess that’s their definition of ambiguity.
EOs remain unless lifted by the urrent POTUS. But as I read this, it seems to make the case Trump is correct about declassifying his docs.
Irrelevant. Plugs didn’t (couldn’t) declassify, or attempt to declassify anything while VP. The garage docs are and have been classified unless Plugs now, as President, declassified them. But it’s too late for him to get off the hook.
I disagree. Snopes just lies for the folks that pay them.
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