Let’s take your hardline stance. He’s not in a SCIF, and he wasn’t President here (2013). That’s a Violation of the Espionage Act.
And you know he’s not in a SCIF, the Chief of Staff next to him is using his Cell phone - or Camera.
Posted on 09/22/2022 6:39:50 PM PDT by GulliverSwift
That is a different argument, and it's worth separating the two points. The first argument is whether documents are actually declassified by a President simply thinking it, but not telling anyone or writing it down. I think the answer to that is going to be "no".
But the argument for criminal liability is different because it does require subjective intent on the part of the perpetrator. A court could find that President Trump believed that the documents would be declassified simply because he took them, and so find that he had no criminal intent.
A D.C jury will not give him the benefit of the doubt.
Matthew 5:27-28
We can rest assured that any such action, decree or resolution by the White House will not survive scrutiny by the Deep State.
Presidents come and go; the bureaucracy stays on forever.
Trump is right in theory but he will have a difficult time making the case that one man, the President, should be the final authority on what the public can know about their government.
There’s being right and then there’s proving it. While president, yes, he could decide in his mind that fact X was declassified and then go on national television without any sort of forewarning and just announce fact X to the world. Reagan did that multiple times to shame the Soviets at key points in his administration, though Reagan probably had a more formal deliberative process and aides who documented things as they went along, but as I understand it, the abrupt declassifications were infuriating to russia watchers inside the government because they weren’t asked first.
But, out of office, it now comes down to “what can you prove?” and that is where Trump is in deep water when it comes to declassification. Further to that, if Trump were just keeping a file of informally declassified documents in a filing cabinet, Biden could reclassify them, again without any documentation needed, he could send some secret service agents into Mar a Lago and say “sorry sir, these have been declared classified” and there’s really not much Trump could do. It’s a whole different level of authority than what the rest of the nation has to operate under and until recently there was a great deal of professional deference for former office holders.
None of the above means that Trump wasn’t allowed to safely store classified information at Mar a Lago as part of his presidential records. That has statutory approval in the Presidential Records Act, and plenty of precedent from Obama who walked off with just about every scrap of paper that wasn’t attached to a toilet paper tube when he left.
That is the saddest part of all along with other targeting of political opposition.
Liberty has died.
The courts rejected that argument out of hand:
"The Times cites no authority that stands for the proposition that the President can inadvertently declassify information and we are aware of none. Because declassification, even by the President, must follow established procedures, that argument fails." N.Y. Times v. CIA, 965 F.3d 109, 123 (2d Cir. 2020).
Or, you could just say that you can't infer declassification through action, and that it must be explicit. Trump still loses under either argument, though.
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Looks like it’s no fun when applying the standard to Joe Biden.
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fortunately he said it on Hannity’s show so no intelligent people heard it
Hannity's been a lightweight his whole TV career. He isn't the brightest light when it comes to responding to other people's comments. When I did watch his show, I remember him missing a lot of opportunities to confront liberals he had on his show. They'd state something as fact, and he'd leave it...not challenge it at all. I haven't watched Fox News since Obama was elected, which means I watch no news programs on any platform. Because he's had such a long career on Fox News, I always figured he had a sugar daddy there who was taking care of him. He certainly hasn't been employed by them based on his merits that's for sure.
Nonsense taken out of context from a circuit court ruling.
The president doesn't have to follow any procedure. No subordinate in the executive branch nor Congress has the Constitutional power to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify by setting procedures. The SCOTUS has already ruled on this.
You are correct about the president not needing to follow procedures.
The inadvertent aspect, is about somebody who isn't the Chief executive, who assumes that something has been declassified because the Chief Executive had inadvertently spoken publicly about the subject. It doesn't apply to the president.
On this matter of classification and declassification a president’s judgement and word should be absolute. Who is the court to demand a president follow a “process” for identifying unclassified documents? They were in his possession at his residence under lock and key.
The only thing it clearly indicates is that he wanted to take those documents with him. If he intended to declassify them - which would mean not just the copies in his possession, but declassified for the entire government - why didn't he do a formal memo like he did for The Crossfire Hurricane documents? That suggests he didn't intend to declassify them, but just thought he could keep them anyway as an ex-President.
On this matter of classification and declassification a president’s judgement and word should be absolute.
What "word" would that be? The problem is that he didn't use words as President to declassify them. If he had, it's a completely different story.
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