An interesting new twist has come to light regarding the “classified” documents that were removed from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

As it turns out, the documents taken at Trump’s home were “declassified” via a “standing order” that had been issued when Trump was in office.

As it turns out, this was business as usual in most administrations.

Working from Home

Generally speaking, classified documents should not be removed from the White House.

As we know, every president travels away from the White House, and since they do not get days off unless they are Joe Biden, they are usually working.

When they have documents that are taken to a residence or different location, those documents are declassified.

Trump’s camp offered a statement to Just the News that stated, “He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified.

“The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the President of the United States.

“The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat, with classification authority delegated BY THE PRESIDENT, needs to approve of declassification is absurd.”

Obama addressed this issue with EO 13526, which stated, “Information originated by the incumbent President or the incumbent Vice President; the incumbent President’s White House Staff or the incumbent Vice President’s Staff; committees, commissions, or boards appointed by the incumbent President; or other entities within the Executive Office of the President that solely advise and assist the incumbent President is exempted from the provisions of paragraph (a) of this section.”

This reinformed the general order that declassifying information is at the discretion of the sitting president.

Point being, if Trump declassified those documents when he was president, they remained declassified if they had not been returned (at least that is my understanding of the process).

This was not out of the norm for administration, as Just the News found out by talking to officials from a variety of previous administrations.

Just the News reported, “One prior administration official related an instance where his boss, while talking to a foreign leader, gave top-secret information to the leader, declassifying simply by sharing what he had seen in a top-secret marked document.

“Another official related an instance he witnessed in which a president, during a meeting, received a top-secret document and one official got up to leave because his clearance was only at the secret level.”

If the DOJ decides to prosecute Trump via the Espionage Act, as it seems it wants to, it will challenge Trump on this front, but the courts have generally backed up a president’s right to declassify as he sees fit.

Of course, this means nothing in this day and age, but the case would likely end up before the Supreme Court at some point, which we have to assume would rule in Trump’s favor.

I just want to add, the more I look at this, the more it becomes clear this is just an effort to make Trump seem like some awful criminal to the people of this country to influence an election.

The fact they specifically cited the Espionage Act alone has everyone up in arms, until they dig into this and see what is really going on.

You guys know me by now… if I thought Trump was guilty, I would call him out, but this, I believe, will eventually come back to utterly destroy this administration, the DOJ, and the current powers that be in the FBI.

Source: Just the News