In the midst of the Justice Department's investigation into his handling of classified materials, former President Donald Trump offered a new and rather unusual defense: that he had the power to declassify documents with his mind.
Trump said in an interview that there doesn't need to be a process. You can declassify if you are the president of the United States.
There doesn't have to be a process. You're the leader of the free world. It's your decision. When you send it, it is classified. Everything was de classified.
According to legal experts contacted by Yahoo News, the idea of declassifying government documents is ridiculous.
The George Washington University law professor and former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security told Yahoo News that it reminded him of Johnny Carson's sketch "where he knows the answers in his mind to questions that haven't been answered."
It is nonsense on stilts, that's what it is. He thought it was almost delusional.
The purpose of a classification system is to tell people how to handle certain types of documents. The definition of absurdist anarchy is a classification system where only the ex- President knows their true classifications.
Barbara McQuade is a University of Michigan Law School professor and former U.S. attorney. The president has a lot of power, but he has to execute it. It is not possible to use his pardon power just by thinking about it. He needs to issue a document to execute this power.
Jonathan Turley, a law scholar who testified in support of Trump during his first impeachment hearing, said that a president could declassify every document in the U.S. government. He removed the documents or classified them as declassified.
The FBI searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., last month.
A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously stayed a portion of a previous ruling that had prevented the government from reviewing material.
11 sets of classified records and some that were labeled "top secret" were among the items seized from Donald Trump's south Florida home.
The judges said that Trump suggested that he may have declassified the documents when he was president. There is no evidence that any of these records were declassified.
In a filing last week, Trump's attorneys stated that he had the power to declassify records, but they didn't say he actually did it.
It was a rebuke to the claims made by Trump's legal team that the former president had the right to keep classified documents.
The judges ruled that Trump had not tried to show that he needed to know the information. Declassifying an official document would not change its content or render it personal.
Andrew Weissmann said that Trump's claim that he can declassify documents with his mind is irrelevant.
Weissmann said that it has nothing to do with a legal defense. Donald Trump is not focused on the task at hand. It's not a relevant thing if you can just think about them.
McQuade said that even if Trump had declassified the documents, they were still government records. Potential charges don't require the documents to be classified to be a crime.
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