Can a President.. or more importantly a former President declassify any document??

[Peacetrain]

I am thinking of documents that belong in the hands of the government, that have security issues if published.. can TFG give away our state secrets?

I don't think he can, and I think that is exactly what has happened

[brooklynite]

1. A former President can't do anything...people need to brush up on their civics.

[Peacetrain]

4. That is what we were discussing here.. Trump is a private citizen and

may very well have committed treason.. but he will try and use that excuse..

[Darwins_Retriever]

34. No, if TFG gave a foreign power classified documents, it is not treason

I violates a bunch of laws, but it is not treason.

Treason is defined in the Constitution. Either you wage war against the US or you give aid and comfort to the enemy. Enemy, by the courts, is a country or group with which the US has taken up arms against. Right now, nobody meets that requirement. Also you must have 2 eye witnesses to the act testify in court.

[MLAA]

6. And some need to brush up on their politeness

[Ohio Joe]

2. Current, yes... Former, no

Former Presidents are just like anyone else (but in some cases, with smaller hands) and have zero authority to declassify anything.

[Peacetrain]

11. yep..

[Claustrum]

3. He can't retroactively declassify them.

Though, he could have declassified them back when he was still in office. But then, the documents wouldn't be classified and needed retrieving if that's the case.

[Peacetrain]

7. This!!!

[Abnredleg]

5. A President has the power to classify or declassify at will

This power comes from his role as Commander in Chief. No so for ex-president.

[Peacetrain]

8. not as a former president.. he is a private citizen

[Abnredleg]

12. I was referring to the President

I updated my post to reflect this.

[Peacetrain]

16. Yep.. and you know I am thinking he might try that tactic

but he is a private citizen.. and has not standing ..

[Demsrule86]

15. But that doesn't affect the Archives...everything is required to store there regardless if a

president declassified it.

[Abnredleg]

17. Correct /NT

[Peacetrain]

23. I did not know that!! learned something new today

[moonscape]

31. This reality is terrifying and a window

into what he, or other monetizing repubs, will assuredly do if they take the WH in 2024. I had no idea until 45 how exceptionally vulnerable we are.

[MineralMan]

9. A sitting President can. A former President cannot.

It is exceedingly rare, though, for even a sitting President to unilaterally declassify documents, without consulting with the intelligence community. It's not something that should be done casually at any time, really.

For those who have not worked with Top Secret materials, and especially not with materials classified at even higher levels, it is hard to understand exactly why things are classified as they are. Most often, such information reveals methods of intelligence gathering and other information that should not be accessed by anyone but those few people who need that information.

[Claustrum]

19. But that's what TFG did while in office.

Remember his stupid Oval Office photoOp that leaked some military base information? Or the meeting with Russia that leaked some classified information that he needed to declassify?

[MineralMan]

24. Yes, he did. He was not a careful nor thoughtful President.

Not in any way. Thank goodness he is not a President at all any longer!

[viva la]

10. A president can declassify, but there is a procedure-

The "label" (the actual label, I guess) has to be changed, and that requires a signed order apparently.

Trump didn't "declassify"-- he just stole.

Of course, most presidents don't have any desire to suddenly shout, "This is declassified," while running out the White House door with top-secret material.

[tanyev]

35. You mean he can't just wave his tiny hands over them and yell, "Declassificorum!"?

[zuul]

13. Important to remember that no matter whether or when they were declassified

TFG STOLE THE DOCUMENTS!

No former president is entitled to keep intelligence documents.

[Peacetrain]

18. +1000

[Claustrum]

22. And on top of that, any normal human being, let alone an ex-president,

would have returned all of the documents when first asked. It wouldn't and shouldn't take so long to retrieve them.

[moonscape]

32. Any normal pres wouldn't pack up

a UHaul with classified docs to begin with. Every day brings more surreality.

[Walleye]

14. As of noon January 20, 2021 he was illegally in possession of classified material. Can't believe he

Can’t believe he declassified all that before he left. He never thought those stinking rules apply to him anyway. He took stuff that looked valuable and I don’t think declassifying it really entered his mind. Remember, he was in a frenzy over losing the election. And still thought he’d be reinstalled. The fact that he made that very crime a felony even tastier cold revenge

[Peacetrain]

21. As someone pointed out in the thread.. if he had declassified such info

while President.. Bureau of records etc would not be seeking said same documents..

[Walleye]

26. Yes. That is an excellent point. I don't think Trump has claimed he declassified them

I think it’s mostly just been his online army speculating

[getagrip_already]

20. Just as importantly....

Any document or subject can be instantly classified by the federal government. It doesn't need to be the potus, every branch has people who can do it.

So it's absolutely possible to have a doc or email that was unclassified when you received it, then classified by a data custodian, and then have someone come looking for it.

That's called a spill review. If they find it, or have reason to believe you have it, they can ask for it back and see to it all copies are destroyed from electronic storage (destroy the storage).

Once notified you have classified material you are not authorized to possess, you best be very quick to do what you are told to.

[MineralMan]

28. Yes, Indeed. Every document I created while in the USAF

was classified at a very high level. I could, and did, put that at the top of every one of them. However, I couldn't declassify anything. That was the nature of my job.

[gratuitous]

25. I take my cue from Cheryl Rofer

She did a long form post at Lawyers Guns and Money on Tuesday. It's worth the time to read through this account by someone who has actually handled and worked with classified documents. The final paragraph addresses the declassification of documents by the President (a former President has no power to do that):

Coda: We will now go through the “Actually, the President holds the ultimate classification authority” stage of social media. This is not untrue, but the way it is used is almost always misleading. (The clue is “actually.”) Even for the President, a certain amount of paperwork and justification is required to declassify classified material. And after noon, January 20, 2021, Trump no longer had that authority. If he had documents with classified markings at Mar-a-Lago, he was in violation of the regulations. Whether it was a crime depends on the level and type of classification.

Which means that on his way out the door at 11:59 a.m. on January 20, 2021, the former guy couldn't just wave his little hands over the contents of the last U-Haul and say, "I de-classify thee, I de-classify thee, mea maxima de-classify thee" and have done with it. There has to be a record of that declassification, otherwise the other people with access to those documents don't know how they are to be handled.

The former guy and his minions would like everyone to believe that de-classification of documents is like the old Harlem Globetrotters "time out, time back in" gag, where Meadowlark Lemon would call time out to get his defender to relax his guard, then call "time back in" and fly by him for a lay-in. But that's not the way it works.

[kentuck]

27. There is so much crap the Congress needs to fix...

..this being one of them.

[Claustrum]

29. I think a president needs to have the power to declassify things as he/she likes.

But the problem is that we had an irresponsible "president" who doesn't believe in the seriousness of the job.

[brush]

30. Well, a former president certainly can't.

trump is so full of shit and thinks he can get away with anything, and he has all his life, but that time has passed.

He's being held accountable finally...at least in this case.

[Cracklin Charlie]

33. Declassification doesn't mean he then owns the documents.

They were not his property.

He knew this before he took them.

[Happy Hoosier]

36. Yes... but....

It's a little bit of a "pics or it didn't happen" kinda thing. Unless there is positive evidence of declassification, the original classification applies. A President cannot reactively declassify a document, and documents cannot be declassified to cover up a crime. Also, an ex-President cannot declassify anything. And Trump saying "I declassified it" is unlikely to hold up to scrutiny. In any case where Trump claims he declassified something but has no documentation of it, the status of the document is at the discretion of the sitting President.

And if Trump DID declassify something very sensitive, that document would be subject to a FOIA request.

[Merlot]

37. He didn't declassify them because they had more value as classified