Former President Donald Trump has staked out a claim that he has the right to declassify documents whenever he wants and for whatever reason, as a defense to the criminal investigation into classified documents stashed at his Mar-a-Lago resort. That attitude is likely to cost him should charges actually go to trial, argued former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance on MSNBC Wednesday.
"So this is from last summer," said anchor Joy Reid. "Ludicrous, ridiculous, complete fiction, former Trump officials claim that he had a standing order to declassify documents. 18 former top Trump administration officials have told CNN that they never heard any such order issued during the time working for Trump and that they believe the claim to be patently false. Several officials laughed at this idea. If there was a magical declassification system that doesn't exist, Donald Trump never said to anyone at the time contemporaneously that he was declassifying things. That seems to me to also be a problem."
Vance agreed, saying, "I think it is a problem."
"Again, this is not how declassification works," said Vance. "One suspects if there is a trial in this case, there will be people who will have worked in the intelligence community. They will do a powerful job of explaining to the jury that declassification isn't a privilege that makes the president's life easier. That's how Donald Trump seems to treat it. This is a remarkable trust that the public places in the commander in chief, this notion of what information is so important that releasing it to the wrong people could do grave damage to our national security."
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"That's the language that underlies this notion of top secret classified information," Vance continued. "Trump is so cavalier in his treatment of this. This is the sort of thing that you can see blowing up in his face in a trial setting."
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Joyce Vance says Trump's attitude on classified documents will "blow up in his face"www.youtube.com
