Trump's Own Chief Of Staff Debunked 'Declassification' Tweets In 2020 Court Filing

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Source: HuffPost

Trump's Own Chief Of Staff Debunked 'Declassification' Tweets In 2020 Court Filing

Years-old testimony from Mark Meadows contradicts the claim that Trump had previously declassified documents seized in the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid.

By Mary Papenfuss
Aug 23, 2022, 10:26 AM EDT

Donald Trump and his allies continue to claim that many of the classified documents seized by the FBI had actually been declassified by presidential tweets in 2020 — but that claim was long ago debunked in a sworn statement from Trump’s own chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Former Trump administration official Kash Patel was the latest to argue that October 2020 tweets from Trump declassified troves of documents, presumably including ones recovered from the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida earlier this month.

“In October of 2020, President Trump put out for the world to see, a sweeping declassification order, and he did it via social media — every single Russia-gate doc, every single Hillary-gate doc, every one,” Patel told Fox News host Mark Levin on Sunday.

-snip-

Trump did indeed tweet on Oct. 6, 2020: “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”

But later that month, Meadows conceded in a sworn declaration to a federal court that Trump’s tweet was not an order to declassify or release those records.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mark-meadows-donald-trump-kash-patel-declassified_n_63042417e4b035629bfd8747

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1. Former Trump officials say his claim of 'standing order' to declassify is nonsense

There was no standing order to declassify documents

Link to tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/politics/trump-claim-standing-order-declassify-nonsense-patently-false-former-officials/index.html

In the days since the FBI seized classified and top secret documents from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, the former President and his allies have claimed that Trump had a "standing order" to declassify documents he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence.

But 18 former top Trump administration officials tell CNN they never heard any such order issued during their time working for Trump, and that they believe the claim to be patently false.

Several officials laughed at the notion. One senior administration official called it "bullsh*t." Two of Trump's former chiefs of staff went on the record to knock down the claim.

"Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given," said John Kelly, who served as Trump's chief of staff for 17 months from 2017 to 2019. "And I can't imagine anyone that worked at the White House after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop.....

Multiple sources said they believed that Trump's claim the documents were declassified was nothing more than a transparent attempt to try to defend himself for taking the documents to Mar-a-Lago.

"There is a process to declassify, the president can't just wave a magic wand," a former senior Trump White House official said.