Page 3 - Declassification Order News Today

A standing declassification order was just bonkers. john bolton, which worked -- trump then changed the story, saying that he could just mentally declassify things, like its a jedi mind trick. the only person that has said he had a declassification order was a loyalist to donald trump. patel was brought before the grand jury, and recorded those reports. we dont know what he said after he was given immunity after the fifth amendment. we shall see, but as far as whether this declassification order...

Nothing approaching that trump had that standing order that i could snap. nothing approached that. i cant imagine anyone that worked at the white house after me would have shrugged their shoulders and allowed that to go forward. kelly making the point that we understood the rules ask we were not casual about them. therefore, the process should have been followed. >> have you ever heard of the declassification order? they have never heard it. clearly, they have never seen it, it likely doesnt exi...

Declassified. i declassified everything. >> he thought it into declassification. what do you make of that? >> yeah, im sorry, thats not how it works. and this is not me saying it. there were three different cases that came out during the trump years, one of which i lost in which trump made these verbal orders of im declassifying x, y, z, every single time it got pulled back. the justice department pulled it back saying it wasnt an actual declassification order. the courts rejected it each time s...

Theyre going to the judge and saying hold off on that part of it and lets get to some other part. but i think what we learned from todays hearing is how little hand they have. they have to drop the classification thing. and i think they know it because theyre throwing everything else at it. theyre attacking the national archives referencing a 20-year-old scandal involving sandy burger. they know its inevitable theyre not going to get to the classification stuff. theyre even asking, weirdly, to d...

Records belong to him. they were these protracted negotiations to even get these documents back. you know, is it just the fact that these documents were gathered and were in possession of outside a secure facility? or does intent have to be proved? >> well, intent matters to prosecutors a whole lot. and, shawns right. see, although the statutes involved here, and there are three of them do not require the documents to be classified, some proctors want to show that they were classified. they want...

Declassification order. again, speculative, but thats the behavior weve seen from donald trump. also, whats not said in this affidavit i think is very telling and there are three categories of people that investigators are clearly worried about. one is spies and the other is detectives and the other is whistle blowers. when i say spies and the doj justification says they dont want to reveal certain information because it could affect secret service operations and that tells me theyre not only wo...

Patel reports this such reports are misleading and the president had declassified the materials at issue. you know how trump rolls. the tell that they seem to know that theyre in some degree of trouble, even their weak defense hasnt been bolstered by any evidence that he did that, and theres this news no evidence at all and they didnt declassify anything. what can you tell us about donald trumps cavalier attitude about national security parties and cls fied materials? >> yeah, i mean, first, ive...

Periodese part of an inquiry because i dont believe for a second there was a declassification order. i dont know what that is, in addition to the damage assessment which is separate and apart from the criminal investigation they may be focused squarely on obstruction because that, you might be able to get obstruction charges without getting into the really sensitive data that cant see the light of day. you might be able to prove, look, you did the things to cover this up. destroy, falsify and yo...

Impeachment. if there were a blanket sort of declassification order in place, why would any of us have worried about declassifying the transcript with ukraine? >> when you say there was a process for declassifying it with zelenskyy, how complicated was that process? >> you know, it wasnt complicated. it was just real. it was formal. there were things to do. there was a paper trail to lay out. and there was -- just like everything that happens in the white house, nothing sort of just happens by m...

Declassified as to donald trump, its declassified for the whole world. so in theory, if that order existed, which i dont think it did, the news media could today file a freedom of information act request for every document he declassified, which over a four-year period, could be a pretty high stack. so i think this is made up and i think a key point here is when somebody is making up stories like that, i think it indicates a level of desperation. >> you heard that. a level of desperation. can yo...