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Some interesting and absurd but still noteworthy events overnight. Trump’s representatives, at least for the moment, have settled on a story which is that he had a “standing order” that any and all classified materials he took home with him to the White House residence was “deemed” declassified. So in fact, none of the materials in question are classified and none of it matters. This was announced on Fox as an official statement from Trump’s office by John Solomon, the notorious fake news hustler who is now operating as Trump’s “designated representative” to the National Archives.
The best I can draw from this is that the ex-President and his entourage are in a state of implosive panic over the events of the last 72 hours. There was certainly no such “standing order,” which will become clear in short order. This also isn’t the way classification works. All classification authority stems from the will and authority of the President. So Presidents can declassify anything they want — with the exception of certain nuclear secrets even Presidents can’t declassify. But the President still has to go through certain procedures. There’s a court case confirming this point from as recently as, I believe, 2019.
We should not lose ourselves in the logic of this inane claim – a fake claim of authority (in pectore declassification) wrapped in a demonstrable lie (the standing order). What is more noteworthy is that these are the claims of someone who is not getting any legal advice. Not bad legal advice. No legal advice. At present Trump is represented by two people, one an unknown lawyer from New Jersey and another a former OAN host. But I don’t think this is even coming from them. These sound like panicked claims of someone improvising without the benefit of legal counsel. What I draw from this is that the real facts of the case are likely worse than they appear.
This doesn’t mean necessarily that the ex-President is in grave legal peril. What it tells me – pulling all these indications together — is that the President’s actions are impossible to defend. Why was he refusing to relinquish material the U.S. government thought so sensitive and secret that they had little choice but to seize it at the first opportunity?
The other measure of this is the reaction from Republican elected officials over the last 48 hours, which as near as I can tell is total silence. It’s hard to march without marching orders and Trump is giving them very little to go on about what the facts are and what the bases are for defending him.
