Trump's 'obscenely reckless' claim about how to declassify top secret docs criticized by legal expert
During an appearance on CNN's "New Day," attorney and national security expert Bradley Moss laughed off former President Donald Trump's claim to Fox News Sean Hannity that he could declassify top secret documents by just thinking about doing so.
Speaking with host Brianna Keilar, Moss was asked about the Wednesday night interview where Trump told Hannity, "There doesn’t have to be a process as I understand it. If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified,’ even by thinking about it because you’re sending it to Mar-a-Lago or wherever you’re sending it. And there doesn’t have to be a process. There can be a process but there doesn’t have to be. You’re the president, you make that decision. So when you send it: it’s declassified. I declassified everything.”
According to Moss, what the former president claimed could not be further from the truth.
"Yeah, I'm sorry, that's not how it works," he told the CNN host. "And this is not me saying it. There were three different cases that came out during the Trump years, one of which I lost, in which Trump made these verbal orders of 'I'm declassifying x, y, z.' Every single time it got pulled back."
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'The Justice Department pulled it back saying it wasn't an actual declassification order," he elaborated. "The courts rejected it each time saying there has to be a process followed."
"The simple verbal assertion isn't enough," he insisted. "Thinking it in his head to declassify it? That would be an obscenely reckless way to handle declassification because no one else in the government would know that these records, this information is suddenly declassified."
"I get he's not a details guy but these processes are what have to be followed," Moss continued. "This is not a defense his lawyers are going to actually try to put up -- they have to try and put up something competent and coherent."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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