Page 45 - Classification System News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

>> bringing these boxes to mar-a-lago would have required just trump and mark meadows and a u-haul. many people or could be implicated in this, michael. >> of course. he's always surrounded himself with people who will do the bad thing that he wants them to do. they may even do it before he asks them to do, it because they understand what those standing orders are. the standing orders are protected him. protect the conspiratorial culture. >> but that won't work when it comes to the legal argument that he seems to be testing or getting ready to make, that he declassified those documents. >> so ...

Is a very confusing statute to people because when you hear it, you're like, oh, that means that the person is a spy. sure, it could. but the espionage act which dates back now over a century has multiple provisions. some of the provisions deal with old school spying, robert hanson, albert james, spying for the russians. other provisions deal with leaking classified information to the media. other provisions deal with the mishandling of classified information which would pertain to what we're talking about. but i'll have to even correct myself because so easily i say classified information. th...

Search warrant. talk to me about them, because the whole issue of whether he declassified or didn't declassify really is immaterial to those three laws that they cited. >> yeah. that's absolutely right. i do think it is worth noting that with respect to the espionage act, although it is technically immaterial, it does require it to be national defense information, and there is an argument that the classification system is what fills in the -- and provides gloss to what that means. so that's probably from donald trump's perspective one where if the documents were in fact declassified, that's a ...

Could you have such a standing order. what if the president in his head said this document is declassified but never tells anybody. that is what john bolton was getting at. it raises interesting almost metaphysical questions. the president does ultimately control the classification system, it is a product of executive order that systems from the president's power as commander-in-chief. and it exists in parallel and separate from the most part legal controls on disclosure of national security secrets, so the espionage act predated the classification system and makes no reference to and if you v...

Act and not be spying in the traditional sense, but it does cover the misuse of classified -- basically what's called closely-held information in that statute. it was actually enacted before the classification system. and i expect that that statute to be listed on the search warrant. >> evan, you noted the likelihood that some of these documents may contain information that is sensitive in a national security perspective. will we ever find out exactly what's in these documents that were seized? >> look, you can look at previous cases where people were charged with this statute which is u.s. co...