Everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time according to Trump.
The moment they left the Oval Office, Trump claimed he had a standing order to declassify the documents.
The DOJ is looking into the legality of Trump taking government records to Mar-a-Lago.
As he sought to develop a new line to explain why top secret government documents were stored at his Mar-a-Lago residence, former President Donald Trump said that everyone takes work home occasionally.
Everyone has to bring home their work from time to time. The statement from the office of the president was read out on Fox News.
The moment they left the Oval Office, Trump claimed he had a standing order to declassify the documents.
In order to get ready for work the next day, President Trump would often take classified documents from the Oval Office to the residence. When documents were removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence, they were deemed to be declassified.
—Acyn (@Acyn) August 13, 2022
It said that the power to classify and declassify documents was in the president's hands.
Previous statements by Trump and his lawyers that the FBI could have planted evidence were incorrect.
Legal experts say that the president doesn't have the power to declassify documents. I don't know if Trump ever did.
Richard Immerman is a historian and an assistant deputy director of national intelligence in the Obama administration. A formal process has to be in place. The system can't work that way.
Declassified documents are marked with the date they were declassified. It is not the case with some of the documents returned from Mar-a-Lago.
When reports of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago emerged in May, a former Trump administration official claimed that the president had declassified the files before he left office.
FBI agents found 11 sets of classified documents when they searched Mar-a-Lago.
The Espionage Act is one of the laws being investigated by the Department of Justice for when Trump took government records to Mar-a-Lago.
There are three laws related to the removal of information about the US's national defense.
The crimes being investigated are not dependent on the documents being classified.
Steven Aftergood, who runs the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation, said that the Espionage Act could leave open the possibility of unclassified national defense information.
Business Insider has an article on it.
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