THIS 60 MINS INTERVIEW?
Posted on 09/22/2022 6:39:50 PM PDT by GulliverSwift
Presidents can declassify documents on a whim, even just by "thinking about it," former President Donald Trump told Fox News' Sean Hannity on Wednesday.
Trump appeared on Hannity's show to discuss the ongoing federal investigation into classified documents found in Trump's Mar-a-Lago home during an FBI raid.
"Is there a process? What was your process to declassify?" Hannity asked.
"There doesn't have to be a process, as I understand it," Trump responded. "You know, different people say different things, but as I understand it there doesn't have to be."
"If you're the president of the United States you can declassify just by saying: ‘It’s declassified.' Even by thinking about it," he added. "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…I declassified everything."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I guess the question with President Trump rests on if he declassified the documents, if was required to document such declassification and if his decision held as soon as he became an ex-President. As, of course, now Biden is the only one with the authority to classify or declassify.
Who knows how it will shake out? I could see long and complex legal arguments either way.
Just google Obama classified documents warehouse. Lots of information about his mishandling of classified documents. Here is one.
They moved many classified documents. “As many as 120 employees will be brought in by the National Archives and Records Administration to sort through the material, which ultimately will be part of the Obama Presidential Center.” Doubtful all those 120 employees have security clearance to handle classified documents.
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Funny, that’s the way everyone thought for 45 years.
Even the Courts thought it was preposterous to question a President’s judgement on the matter.
Now, the big push is to elevate bureaucrats (like the Ukraine whistleblower) and consider only some Presidents as having complete authority.
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It’s an absurd argument because you can’t prove an unexpected thought ever happened.
Yeah, this will never hold up in court.
Just crazy crap.
And let’s assume that President Trump is 100% correct in the legal sense. Isn’t there ANY benefit to memorializing such declassification so there is a record made at that time? Any?
I wish he realized how dumb this sounds.
My gosh.
He not only loads the gun for his enemy, he cocks, aims and pulls the trigger.
Because if his only argument is that a former President saying that he mentally declassified things while President actually declassified them, that argument will lose 9-0 at the Supreme Court. As it should.
49 minutes whining about the FBI raid. 5 minutes on policy. Hannity is a waste of time.
Well, it appears his lawyers are taking their cue from him with the same level of “conceptualizing”, and judges won’t buy that.
Biden on 60 minutes was more serious and the questions were tough and fair.
Don’t know about the White House but industry has facility security officers whose job is to safeguard, destroy, and rarely declassify documents. In any case the proper documentation has to be done. I imagine the White House has similar rules. Even if President Trump declassified something someone had to do the paperwork.
Every time.
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Let me sum this up. The Media has a con job going where they are trying to convince people that the same Classified handling for clerks and Sailors applies to the POTUS.
It’s clearly a Con-job, but if you accept the Lie, then there is Clinton standard.
The Clinton standard, which also applied to about 11 of her staff, states that the subject had to know they were breaking the law and intended to break the law.
Even though Hillary and her staff went to a high degree to destroy the evidence after denying it - it was not considered evidence they knew what they were doing was wrong.
“With respect to Miss Huma Abedin in particular, we didn’t have any indication she had had a sense that what she was doing was a violation of the law,”
If you can bleach drives and break up phones with hammers - and that’s not obstruction- good luck claiming Trump obstructed Justice.
It’s the Clinton standard.
Im not sure what to believe is legal
He may be trying to simplify the argument
I agree. This is on Hannity.
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I read where 60 Mins (Pelley) falsely claimed in the formation of a question that Hunter Biden was cleared and the Republicans found no wrongdoing.
That didn’t happen.
It doesn’t matter if he has a good argument, hes not going to win in the Federal system. especially D.C.
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