Former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann responded Thursday after former President Donald Trump highlighted a "memorandum on declassification."
On Truth Social, Trump posted a link to his archived White House news site saying in a memo that he declassified a lot of material related to the Russia investigation, which was code named Crossfire Hurricane. The memo was posted less than 24 hours before Trump left the White House.
"So, I don't think if I were his counsel — I'm not sure I would have told him that it was a good thing to release that for a number of reasons," said Weissmann. "One, it's simply not a defense. I mean, we've talked a lot about the fact that the statutes involved here do not require the documents to be classified."
"Two, it's highly unlikely that all of the documents that were at Mar-a-Lago all relate to Crossfire Hurricane," said the skeptical former Justice Department lawyer. "To say highly unlikely is generous. But the main issue and the reason I think it really hurts him is that the document shows that Donald Trump knows how to declassify things and what the process is."
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It ultimately makes Trump look worse if he's well versed in how to classify and declassify information and it turns out he didn't go through any of the processes actually to declassify something. There are already communications with the FBI, Department of Justice and now a formal White House memo all creating a paper trial for Trump's behavior.
"So, it really belies the claim made that there was some spontaneous standing order where if you move documents from one room in the White House to another room things become declassified," Weissmann explained.
See the full conversation below.