Former President Donald Trump spoke out about the FBI raid against his Florida mansion at Mar-a-Lago late last month as part of an interview with Fox News in which he stated that as president he had possessed the ability to declassify any documents he wanted just by “thinking about it.”
The various parts of the U.S. criminal code which were called upon for the search warrant seemed to indicate that the overall investigation was centered around matters entirely unrelated to whether the papers in question had been declassified or not. The specific sections of the U.S. criminal code which were cited included certain violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction of justice in relation to the destroying of documents, and the unlawful taking of governmental records.
“I did declassify,” stated Trump to Sean Hannity, a host for Fox News, as part of an interview centered on Mar-a-Lago.
“Is there a process — what was your process to declassify?” questioned Hannity.
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there’s — different people say different things, but as I understand there doesn’t have to be,” stated Trump. “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 to wherever you’re sending it.”
“And 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. So when you send it, it’s declassified. I declassified everything,” Trump went on. “Now, I declassified things, and we were having a lot of problems with NARA. You know, NARA is a radical Left group of people running that thing, and when you send documents over there, I would say there’s a very good chance that a lot of those documents will never be seen again.”
Hannity went back at a later point to speak about the issue of declassifying documents, positing, “why did you approve a special master that signed one of the FISA warrants? That was surprising.”
“Well, the lawyers had a lot — I didn’t know any of the people involved. But, you know, if you look at it, he was stung badly by that because the FBI lied to him and the people in the Justice Department lied to him,” stated Trump. “So, if you think about it, yes, he approved it and he got stung very, very badly by that.”
“But I declassified the documents when they left the White House,” concluded Trump. “In other words, when they left the White House, they were declassified.”
