Former Trump Chief of Staff Shuts Down Ex-President’s Claim He Could Automatically Declassify Docs: ‘That’s Not How the System Works’
Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney poured cold water on Donald Trump’s claim that he had a “standing order” to automatically declassify certain classified government documents.
Last week, FBI agents executed a search warrant of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, where they retrieved boxes of documents Trump was supposed to give to the National Archives upon leaving office. Some of the materials were reportedly classified.
Trump has disputed that claim and stated he had a “standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.”
On Friday, Mulvaney appeared on Newsmax and was asked about the alleged “standing order.” He said there’s more to declassifying documents than what his former boss described.
“Any president of the United States has broad authority to declassified documents,” Mulvaney began. “That being said, there’s a formal structure to doing that. You can’t just sort of stand over a box of documents, wave your hand and say, ‘These are all declassified.’ That’s not how the system works.”
He went on to state he’d never heard of any such policy in the Trump White House.
“Thats sort of order didn’t exist when I was chief of staff,” Mulvaney continued. “I read news reports this morning that John Kelly – my predecessor as chief of staff – said the same thing: that order was not in place when he was in the White House. Was it possible that it went in late in the administration? Yes, but it would be extraordinarily unusual and there would be a paper trail that I think it will be incumbent upon former President Trump to bring out if that’s really going to be part of his defense here.”
Watch above via Newsmax.
