Evidence Trump stole classified materials is clear; claim that he declassified them is 'nonsense'
It was absolutely predictable—and predicted—that Donald Trump’s response to the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago would move through the Four Stages of a Trump Scandal:
- Deny doing anything wrong.
- Claim the other guys are politically motivated.
- Say something about Hillary Clinton.
- Explain why breaking the law is perfectly okay for Trump.
In this case, that final step consists of a conservative pundit John Solomon, who Trump hired as one of his designees to the National Archives, reading a statement on Aug. 12 claiming that Trump had issued a “standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.” Some people were immediately skeptical that such an order ever existed, and others just as quickly pointed out that such an order would be illegal. Because this is simply not how declassification works. No matter what Trump may have said, declassification is a well-defined process, and the idea of an order that makes documents automatically declassified is simply ridiculous.
But whether or not Trump’s “standing order” would be either legal or practical is beside the point. The evidence continues to be that no such order ever existed in the first place.