Former President Donald Trump said in an interview on Fox News that a president of the United States has the power to declassify documents just by thinking about it. However, many legal experts have opposed this claim, and many opponents of Trump seek to prove that Trump's claims are false. So let's dig a little to see whether or not Trump is right.
According to Yahoo News, Paul Rosenzweig, a law professor at George Washington University, says that Trump's words are nonsense, even adding that it is delusional. "A classification system where only the ex-President knows their true classifications in his heart is the very definition of absurdist anarchy," he said.
Jonathan Turley, a law scholar, added to this, writing in his blog post, "If a president could declassify with a thought, he could literally declassify every document in the possession of the U.S. government with a constitutional Jedi-like power."
However, according to Verifythis, the President doesn't have to follow a specific protocol to declassify documents. Kel McClanahan, executive director of the National Security Counselors, explains that classification has three levels determined by how dangerous the information is to the United States. He says, "When you classify a document, that means that only people with a security clearance equal to the classification or higher can read it."
The President is at the highest level of clearance.
The Executive Order 12356 sec. 3.4(a) says, " Except as provided in Section 3.4(b), all information classified under this Order or predecessor orders shall be subject to a review for declassification by the originating agency, if: (1) the request is made by a United States citizen or permanent resident alien, a federal agency, or a State or local government; and (2) the request describes the document or material containing the information with sufficient specificity to enable the agency to locate it with a reasonable amount of effort." So, in other words, when declassifying a document, there is a whole process that goes down to declassifying it.
However, sec. 3.4(b) specifies that the President is exempt from having to go through with those declassification reviews if the President, White House Staff, committees, commissions, or boards appointed by the President were the origin of the information.
That means that if Trump and his appointed staff had classified the information, they have the power to declassify it if they wish to. Still, if the documents don't originate from them, then they have no power to declassify those documents.
For now, we await further news.
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