Politics : Trump says presidents can declassify documents by the power of thought

Donald Trump has claimed presidents can declassify documents by the power of thought alone.

Speaking to Sean Hannity of Fox News in an interview broadcast on Wednesday, the former US president said:

“Different people say different things, but as I understand it, if you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it. Because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever you’re sending it. 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.”

Trump has consistently claimed he declassified the documents by presidential fiat, whether physically, by taking them to the White House residence, verbally or, he now claims, by the power of telepathy alone.

“In other words, when I left the White House, they were declassified,” he told Hannity.

Experts doubt it. In August, Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, a secrecy specialist, told the New York Times: “Hypothetical questions like ‘What if a president thinks to himself that something is declassified? Does that change its status?’ are so speculative that their practical meaning is negligible.

“It’s a logical mess. The system is not meant to be deployed in such an arbitrary fashion.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/22/trump-sean-hannity-interview-fox-news-mar-a-lago-documents-thought

Listen, I don't like Trump, in fact I'm the biggest Trump hater ever, but even I have to admit that he's right here. We know a president has the power to declassify documents at will, so if the argument being made is he is guilty of mishandling classified documents, then you're arguing he actively chose not to declassify the documents and knowingly commit a crime. It's stupid to think anyone would ever do that, or that the laws are written that would even make it possible. Once again, Trump is right, as always.

He's NOT right here. There is a procedure for declassification and he didn't even come close to following it. In any case, that doesn't explain why classified documents are MISSING.

Shit happens.

Trump is an idiot!

I snorted when I heard that clip. How can anyone support still this idiot? This has to be the dumbest thing any President has ever said.

It's irrelevant to me because Hillary did much worse, Comey proved it, and nothing happened to her.

So, she set the new precedent. And she did not have the authority to declassify documents. But she had, and deleted, thousands of them.

She deleted them forever? There were no back-ups, anywhere?

---

MMC2: "Drill here! Drill now, Biden!"

Yes. Only she and her team of lawyers know what were deleted.

Shut up, stupid.

---

My password is password

That doesn't sound like classified information then, if she was the only one who had it. That's not how it works.

---

MMC2: "Drill here! Drill now, Biden!"

Yes, it is.

Sounds legit.

---

The Lion does not give a fuck. Bring. More. Sheep.

I am going to agree with him because I do not want to get killed by his thought death rays!

It's true because I saw it in a movie once.

---

Is it creative to have an uncreative signature such as this one?

Yes, he also healed the country with a prayer.

I thought everyone knew this.

---

MMC2: "Drill here! Drill now, Biden!"