In an interview with Fox News, former President Trump claimed that presidents don’t have to go through a formal process to declassify sensitive documents, and that they can do so “even by thinking about it.”
Trump’s comments came after he repeatedly argued that he declassified secret documents he took home with him to Florida after leaving the White House in 2021, and amid a Justice Department investigation into his handling of classified materials.
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify him simply by saying, ‘he’s declassified.’ Even thinking about it.” “There can be a process, but there doesn’t have to be. You are the president, you make that decision. So when you send it, he gets declassified,” Trump added. “I declassified everything.”
Various experts have stressed that while presidents have broad power to declassify documents, doing so triggers a chain of events, as the intelligence agencies that manage them must take additional steps.
Trump and some of his allies have insisted that the former president declassified all the documents he took with him when he left the White House.
The FBI searched his property at Mar-a-Lago last month after a search in January turned up dozens of classified, secret and top-secret documents.
Trump’s lawyers last week said he had the power to declassify documents, but stopped short of saying whether he actually did. The Justice Department responded by noting that Trump’s legal team implied but did not fully state that Trump had declassified the documents.
Several Republican lawmakers rejected his claims. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN that “the process is probably more complicated than that.” And the number two Republican, Sen. John Thune (R-SD), declared that there is a process to declassify documents “that must be followed and adhered to. And I think that should apply to anyone who has access to or deals with classified information. I think the concern is about those being taken from the White House without some way of declassifying them or the fact that classified documents were removed without proper safeguards,” he added. “I think that’s what the Justice Department is headed for.”
