Trump knew how to use 'declassifying tools' as president: former White House official

A former White House official told investigators that Donald Trump knew how to properly declassify material as president and used that process while in office.

The former official was in charge of advising both the Trump and Obama administrations on the declassification process, and is the only witness known to have been interviewed by the respective teams of prosecutors investigating Trump and President Joe Biden's handling of classified materials, reported CNN.

“You wouldn’t expect it to match the intensity, and it didn’t,” the former official told CNN, comparing the discussion with Biden investigators and talks with Trump prosecutors.

The former official voluntarily told federal prosecutors that Trump followed the process correctly while in office, which could undermine his claims that he automatically declassified everything he took home to Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House.

Trump is expected to be indicted imminently after a grand jury heard testimony about him keeping classified document at his Mar-a-Lago home.

The official told prosecutors that then-National Security Council lawyer John Eisenberg met with the former president in the Oval Office to discuss the declassification of a 2018 congressional memo related to the Russia investigation.

“Get your declassifying tools," Eisenberg told the former official as he left the Oval Office, according to that individual who then redacted documents with White House lawyers.

Trump’s legal team told Congress that the documents were accidentally packed when Trump moved from the White House. Trump said a recent CNN town hall that the materials were “automatically declassified."