records act requires preserving such documents. truf trump s claim is just the latest in a string of explanations and excuses. he keeps changing his defenses. first he said the fbi planted it, then he said, well, he declassified it, and now he is saying it is mine and not your. well, it is the government s property, it is not his and i think that is what healed him ts this situation. people are wondering why risk all this to keep the documents? now you see it, he just believes it is his and he never thought that he would get caught. butt fact that he keeps changing his explanations surely raises the eyebrows amongst prosecutors who pay attention to these things because in my mind it shows consciousness of guilt. as for the surveillance footage of the fbi search, an attorney explains what we might learn if that is made public. potentially it would reveal the manner in which the
there were procedures that apply that have to be complied with. the procedures generatedded are pursuant to executive order. because everyone in the executive branch exercisers the president s power, they don t have their own power, the president doesn t have to comply with those regulations. seems this say question of fact, whether he declassified, did enough to declassify documents while he was still president. but i don t think that the fact that he didn t comply with the letter of the regulations that are for subordinative agencies setet settles that. trey: what do you make of the chronology.
search warrant. talk to me about them, because the whole issue of whether he declassified or didn t declassify really is immaterial to those three laws that they cited. yeah. that s absolutely right. i do think it is worth noting that with respect to the espionage act, although it is technically immaterial, it does require it to be national defense information, and there is an argument that the classification system is what fills in the and provides gloss to what that means. so that s probably from donald trump s perspective one where if the documents were in fact declassified, that s a large if, where he would have the best argument to argue that that statute shouldn t be charged. but the other two statutes don t require in any way that the documents be classified, and the most surprising statute that we saw listed is the 1519 obstruction statute. that potentially could be quite
declassified as to donald trump, it s declassified for the whole world. so in theory, if that order existed, which i don t think it did, the news media could today file a freedom of information act request for every document he declassified, which over a four-year period, could be a pretty high stack. so i think this is made up and i think a key point here is when somebody is making up stories like that, i think it indicates a level of desperation. you heard that. a level of desperation. can you explain this latest argument that we re hearing from the trump camp, with regard to declassification? so, i think that was a pretty good layout of the argument. unlikely that it s true that there was a declassification order, as trump contends in place. if there was, think for a second about the consequences. it would mean that trump essentially for his personal convenience, because his representatives have said that the president, who notoriously, by the way, didn t work, and watched fox n
there were procedures that apply that have to be complied with. the procedures generatedded are pursuant to executive order. because everyone in the executive branch exercisers the president s power, they don t have their own power, the president doesn t have to comply with those regulations. seems this say question of fact, whether he declassified, did enough to declassify documents while he was still president. but i don t think that the fact that he didn t comply with the letter of the regulations that are for subordinative agencies setet settles that. trey: what do you make of the chronology.