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 ...
In all my military years of handling very classified data, I never say a single thing that said “Classified by the Vice President” or anything resembling that.
Every single one had the President as the Classification Authority.
Now that didn’t mean the president himself hand stamped it, but you get my point.
Funny the fake Snopes analysis says that Vice President Biden had the unfettered authority to declassify documents by referring us to this Obama executive order:
However, scanning the order reveals that Obama’s vice president had the authority to classify documents but had no authority to declassify documents.
You mean a former HATT........ Husband At The Time 🤣
Snopes is a clown and his hag wife getting paid gigs to push lefty excuse memes in damage control.
You see, these Snopes debunk actors are telling us:
“Joe’s in the clear! He declassified the whole schmididdle, see?”
I do not believe this to be true. Obama cannot just wave his hand and this be so.
The left has been working hard to find something to take the heat off their man biden. This is the best they could find.
Won’t work. What they need is to concoct another “crisis” real quick. Maybe they could get one of those bimbos to create a story of Trump saying something racy 30 years back.
vice presidents have the authority to classify and declassify documents - just like presidents.
They make clear they don’t know what they are talking about in the following sentences where they discuss ordering others to declassify.
“ Under the EO, the VP can only declassify documents that the VP classified.
The VP cannot declassify something the POTUS classified.”
Or anyone else for that matter.
You are correct, and Snopes has long ago been discredited as a reliable source.
The same question applies to both Biden and Trump: If they have the ability to declassify something there should be some record of it, somewhere. Otherwise, they are saying anyone picking it up can read it and show it to anyone they want.
For instance…could Hunter’s drug dealer take a look, make a copy and show it to his friends! Could Baron Trump take a document to school with him to show his class?
If they were “declassified”, why weren’t the markings noted or changed?
I posted President Trump’s WH letter declassifying Crossfire Hurricane and related.
I posted it here and elsewhere shortly after the FBI raided his home.
President Trump was very careful to declassify documents properly before he was illegally ousted from the White House.
Without knowing what the documents in his possession are…we don’t know if those were covered. I am not suggesting otherwise.
It’s Snopes.🙄
Yeah, this “fact check” misses the actual point made by critics. Seems like they must have missed it intentionally, but maybe they are stupid. Or maybe it’s a mix wjere their desire to win the narrative makes them stupid.
Why were the markings not changed? Lol. Yeah and if you keep an old box of some product that says “new and improved” on it around for many years does does it usually change to “old and deprecaded” when the company that made it come out with something newer? Or do boxes and papers not magically change like that?
Snopes didn’t bother to show us the law as stated in the US Constitution because it directly conflicts with Snopes’ ‘opinion’ of a law they don’t bother to cite.
The documents President Trump declassified that were taken by Secret Service to Mar-a-Lago are on record.
President Trump’s motion for appointing a Special Master to validate the seized documents was an attempt to prevent false documents from being inserted into the whole.
President Trump is a perfectionist who is meticulous in his affairs. He certainly crossed all t’s and dotted all i’s in such matters.
It is criminal what is being done to him.
It is now coming out that Biden knew recently that he’s been caught, that as US Vice President, he was caught in breaching national security. Last year he learned that evidence was emerging that he had taken highly sensitive documents without declassification and without authorization. He learned this MONTHS BEFORE the Raid on Mar-a-Lago making it evident that this raid was an incident to give cover to Biden’s criminality.
Why anyone would use Snopes is a mystery to me, since they’ve been proven to be a left wing shill
I’m sure the first witness the defense will produce is Snopes.
I would also imagine the veep would need to formally notify the government of any such changes?
Dramatic difference in scope, scale and style of power the prez has on this.
But classic “fact checker” propaganda technique of knocking down a strawman argument to try to make a relevant truth appear false.
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