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clearly established procedures involving classified documents d. he know the right and wrong way of handling those items when he took them from the white house to mar-a-lago. cnn has learned the national archives is ready to hand over records to special counsel jack smith showing that the former president and his top adviser certainly did know. just walk us through your reporting, jamie. >> anderson, cnn has obtained this letter that was sent by the national archives, as you said, informer former president trump that it is set to hand over the 16 presidential records. they're from hi...

You get to the real ultimate thing is can he do what he wants to, as he's saying? and that's never been tested in the court. no president has ever tried to do what he's doing. the norm is, as kerry explained, when there's a process, you're supposed to follow the process. we've never had a president who just sort of ignored that process and claimed he can get around it. theoretically, he might have that power, and i think he's going to try to push it that far to see what that power is. >> john, the letter from the national archives states that the records will be handed over to special counsel ...

That there is no indication or evidence that he ever actually made that decision. >> so, that's -- i mean, it's a very important -- it's an important point and a fine one. there's a process for declassifying material. the president has broad authority on this to perhaps go outside that process. but it's not clear that even if he did that -- >> that he ever actually did that. so, there's -- >> there's a -- are you say there's a way to go outside that process that there would be some sort of trail of? >> it would be his inherent constitutional authority, a president's constitutional authority to...

Either they would say, no, the information is still classified, or they could potentially say, no, i think the information should be declassified. and then that would be documented through a follow-on process. that's not ideal. but that's theoretically could happen. >> when the former president says, well, you know, i can just declassify by saying it's declassified, if he had done that, there would still be some sort of trace of people saying, okay, the then-president declassified this document -- >> yes, there would have -- >> -- identify such and such. >> there would have had to have been so...