(08-12-2022, 08:18 PM)jj82284 Wrote:

(08-12-2022, 02:35 PM)The Real Marty Wrote: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that FBI agents took boxes of classified documents from Mar-A-Lago, including some classified as "top secret."  They recovered 4 sets of documents classified "top secret," 3 sets classified "secret," and 3 sets classified "confidential." 

Trump's lawyers say he used his authority to declassify those documents before he left office, but there are pretty strict procedures for doing that.  The President doesn't get to just wave his hand and pronounce them "declassified."  I guess we'll find out if those documents were declassified or not.

DrudgeReport has a great headline: "Feds Hunt Stolen Nuke Docs" with a picture of Trump and a nuclear bomb going off in the background.  You have to laugh at that level of sensationalism.

Actually no.  He can wave his hand.

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(08-12-2022, 05:04 PM)homebiscuit Wrote: Item 2A: an SCI document. That's not good.

https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/c...0_15-1.pdf

It's not like the president has unilateralauthority to determine classification status.  

This is actually an even greater example of media power than state authority.  They are going to push thus blatantly false narrative right through  grand jury.  

It'd be beautiful if it wasn't nihilistic orwelian propaganda.

If what you say is true, then it would be impossible to ever prosecute a former President for taking classified documents out of the White House, because he could just claim he declassified them.  This would give any former President the power to freely publish any of our national secrets.  Think that through.  Joe Biden loses the next election and decides to declassify the plans to all our latest weapons systems and send them to the Chinese.  According to you, he could do that with impunity.  

There is a process that is normally followed.  

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-classified-records/

Trump's defenders claim these documents were declassified, but they just failed to mark them "declassified" which is part of the normal procedure.  I would be interested to see what is in these documents.  That shouldn't be a problem, since they have supposedly been declassified, right?  It would also be interesting to see what evidence he has that he did declassify them, and why he thought it was okay to declassify them.  One of them was marked at the highest level of classification.  I wonder what was in that one, and why Trump thought it was okay to declassify it and take it to Mar-A-Lago.

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