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Trump: I could declassify documents by thinking about it


According to Trump's lawyers' filing, the EO applies to the president also because it says

the Executive Order grants authority to declassify information to either the official who originally classified the information or that individual’s supervisors—necessarily including the President. § 3.1(b)(1), (3)

Got it now?

What Trump and his lawyers try to argue isa that the EO wording supports Trump's claim of his broad declassification authority because Obama's EO says that the President has an "original classification authority" and is granted authority (by Obama's EO) to declassify information.

Of course, Trump's lawyers leave out other parts of the same Obama's EO which was (according to their words) "controlling" during Trump's term. And according to those parts, Trump just could not declassify information with the purpose of removing it from the agency as he was leaving his office!
 
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@Captain Adverse

Let's review how dumb your position is.

Personal attacks don't win any arguments.

You literally believe a president can say, 18 months later, that he merely thought about declassifying the documents 18 months ago, even if he didn't think that and is lying his ass off.

No! YOU are the one who keep saying that.

I am "literally saying" that by a President ACTING like a document has been declassified makes it declassified.

For example, talking about the information to persons without clearance, or announcing the information in public.

In this case as simply as saying to someone, "Pack these documents up, I intend to use them for... (publishing in a book, legal action against so and so, evidence of misconduct in the DOJ), etc."

Hoo boy, pass the lobotomizer...

If I dealt in ad hominin as readily as YOU do, I could turn this silly comment back on you.

However, I don't do that kind of thing.

So, I'll rest my case as it is getting monotonously boring responding to you.
 
Utter nonsense, because,





 
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I am "literally saying" that by a President ACTING like a document has been declassified makes it declassified.

You insult people's intelligence when you claim that a president acting in secrecy acts like he has declassified a document. Heck, even now Trump's lawyers refuse to tell us that their boss has declassified specific documents Declassification requires some type of communication so that a presidential wish becomes ...wait for it......ACTION. Hiding such "declassification thoughts" from every subordinate responsible for declassifying documents AND from the upcoming CIC makes Trump act like he did NOT actually want to initiate any action to declassify any document. He acted like he wanted to steal classified information! Unfortunately, stealing is not an executive action.
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Count how many shits I don't give about what that ignorant moron Trump said. There are processes, protocols and paper-trails attached to the declassification process enshrined in law; never mind the storage and handling of very sensitive materials. Trump ignored them all for reasons best known to himself.
 
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EO's apply to subordinates...not to the guy issuing the EO.

Read it...it is directed only toward agencies and individuals. Not to the President.
The EO specific to sensitive and secret materials is the one issued by Obama, and it was not amended by Trump. It clearly outlines the processes which must be adhered to when classifying or declassifying materials. Where in the EO does it categorically exempt the POTUS? It doesn't.
 
That EO clearly outlines the processes which must be adhered to...by executive branch agencies and individuals. The EO doesn't HAVE to exempt the President. He is exempt by the nature of his position.
 
That EO clearly outlines the processes which must be adhered to...by executive branch agencies and individuals. The EO doesn't HAVE to exempt the President. He is exempt by the nature of his position.
Nonsense; that's as dumb as the POTUS thinking about declassifying and claiming that's all that is needed. Nowhere does it state that a POTUS is exempt; not in law, not in declassification statutes, not in the Constitution. Only in Trump's mind.
 
Nonsense; that's as dumb as the POTUS thinking about declassifying and claiming that's all that is needed. Nowhere does it state that a POTUS is exempt; not in law, not in declassification statutes, not in the Constitution. Only in Trump's mind.
Regardless your uninformed opinion, what I said is fact.

The president’s classification and declassification powers are broad
Experts agreed that the president, as commander in chief, is ultimately responsible for classification and declassification. When people lower in the chain of command handle classification and declassification duties — which is usually how it’s done — it’s because they have been delegated to do so by the president directly, or by an appointee chosen by the president.​
The majority ruling in the 1988 Supreme Court case Department of Navy vs. Egan — which addressed the legal recourse of a Navy employee who had been denied a security clearance — addresses this line of authority.​
"The President, after all, is the ‘Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States’" according to Article II of the Constitution, the court’s majority wrote. "His authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security ... flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant."​
Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."​
In fact, Robert F. Turner, associate director of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, said that "if Congress were to enact a statute seeking to limit the president’s authority to classify or declassify national security information, or to prohibit him from sharing certain kinds of information with Russia, it would raise serious separation of powers constitutional issues."​
The official documents governing classification and declassification stem from executive orders. But even these executive orders aren’t necessarily binding on the president. The president is not "obliged to follow any procedures other than those that he himself has prescribed," Aftergood said. "And he can change those."
Indeed, the controlling executive order has been rewritten by multiple presidents. The current version of the order was issued by President Barack Obama in 2009.
The national-security experts at the blog Lawfare wrote in the wake of the Post’s revelation that the "infamous comment" by President Richard Nixon — that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" — "is actually true about some things. Classified information is one of them. The nature of the system is that the president gets to disclose what he wants."
 
More garbage. No president has the authority to unilaterally declare anything declassified-especially any materials pertaining to nuclear secrets which come under the purview of the DoE and entirely separate legislation. ONLY the Director of Classification at the DoE is empowered to so do. Trump's febrile imagination does not nullify the law, and he cannot change it to suit his purpose. The law is clear and unambiguous:
 
That EO clearly outlines the processes which must be adhered to...by executive branch agencies and individuals. The EO doesn't HAVE to exempt the President. He is exempt by the nature of his position.
Good for the goose, good for the gander...






 
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None of these processes apply to the president himself.
 
Explain what a "deep state" is. That's the only way to determine as to whether, or not, he ( or anyone else ) "understands what a deep state is."
You’re conversing with an individual that thinks a man should be able to rape his wife.
 

Regardless what someone on twitter says, a President is NOT bound by an EO.

By JOSH GERSTEIN
07/02/2018 01:43 PM EDT
Updated: 07/02/2018 01:47 PM EDT

"A tweet from President Donald Trump disputing aspects of a news report about a CIA program to aid Syrian rebels did not declassify the program or undermine the government’s legal authority to keep details about it secret, a federal judge ruled in an opinion released Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Carter Jr. rejected arguments that Trump effectively confirmed the existence of the program when he used his Twitter account last July to counter a Washington Post story that reported Trump’s decision to end the effort and suggested that the move was a concession to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad,” Trump wrote, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad..."




From Politico, above :

"...did not declassify the program or undermine the government’s legal authority to keep details about it secret, a federal judge ruled in an opinion released Monday.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Carter Jr. rejected arguments that Trump effectively confirmed the existence of the program when he used his Twitter account last July to counter a Washington Post story that reported Trump’s decision to end the effort and suggested that the move was a concession to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad,” Trump wrote, referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad..."
 
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