De Classifying Things News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

and saying that he was able to declassify whatever he wants. joyce, put that -- make sense of that for us? explain that to us. >> well, i'd love to make sense of it, katy, but it doesn't make much in the way of sense. it is a shocker that the former president would try to distract from his own problems but invoking barack obama who by all accounts including this official one complied fully with the presidential records act. when it comes to these new suggestions that trump could have declassified these documents on his way out the door, this rings a little bit too good to be true. an...

Record to some extent. he is supposed to save a lot of that. it is not at all in the classified category. which is really what this search was all about. but given trump's habits here, i think that basically any evidence of concealment is something that authorities were very much looking for when they went to actually go and search mar-a-lago, katy. >> tally, let's focus on that when ryan just flagged. any evidence of the knowing alteration or destruction or concealment of any government and or presidential records or any documents with classification markings. what does it say to you that the...

Classify information. but there is a process and the department of justice concluded that he didn't go through such a process. >> but talk about how this information is normally viewed f. you're getting top secret information, compartmented information, your the president of the united states and have the right to see any of it, what is the process of getting those documents, viewing those documents, and then returning those documents. there has got to be a log, right, that shows who is handling them and when. and when they've been returned or properly destroyed. >> that is right. exactly. the...

There was top secret compartmented information that the fbi said it recovered according to the inventory list. does that concern you? >> of course it does. information is secret for a reason. now sometimes too many things are made secret. but as long as they're secret, we ought to honor that because they're secret on the theory they are harmful to the interest of the united states of america is disclosed. and no one is authorized to take those to their personal home or something of that nature. including a stormer president of the united states. so, we need to see that. now, you said shortly a...

When it comes to top secret information, compartmented information, the highest level of security that the government said it has, the most sensitive stuff, does the president need a reason to do so? >> no, i mean, it is a presidential power. ez the executive. other presidents were very cautious about this kind of thing. they didn't want to reveal sources of methods of the intelligence for instance. they didn't want to reveal to an adversary let's say what might be in the american knowledge base because you then give away, you know, an advantage. and so, it is pretty unusual for a president to...