There's murky water filling in the spaces of what Trump deems presidential privilege and what should, in effect, be declassified for the American people's palates.
Back in 2017, then-White House press secretary Sean Spicer announced at a press briefing that Trump’s tweets calling his travel ban a “TRAVEL BAN” count as official policy because Trump “is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States.” Sarah Huckabee Sanders took over Spicer's position and reaffirmed that stance a few months later.
On Oct. 20, Trump’s chief of staff declared under oath that the president didn’t actually mean the things he said in a tweet on October 6. The tweet is below.
According to The Bulwark contributor Kim Wehle, the governing Executive Order signed by President Obama applies the following barometer to classification and declassification: “'The authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by . . . the President and the Vice President,' along with agency heads and other officials, including those 'designated by the President' (e.g., Bill Barr). 'Information shall be declassified or downgraded by . . . the official who authorized the original classification, if that official is still serving in the same position and has original classification authority,' or 'a supervisory official,' which presumably includes the president himself."
"Obviously, Trump irresponsibly mistweeted when he said that he had declassified the materials relating to Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election," Wehle wrote. "Once again, his recklessness potentially compromised national security and required the government’s lawyers to clean up after him in court by effectively footnoting the law governing declassification. But what’s galling is the hypocrisy of seeking—at the same time—to trounce Carroll’s private defamation suit under the guise of the Trump’s constitutional presidential prerogatives."
Nowhere was this more clear than what happened this week.
