Ex-House members urge for secret doc declassification process as Trump case looms
WASHINGTON – Former members of the House Intelligence Committee urged the panel’s current members on Wednesday to spell out the process a US president must use to declassify secret documents under their Constitutional authority — as former President Donald Trump faces a potential indictment over that very issue.
“The rules for declassifying by a president should be made much clearer,” former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) told the committee during a special hearing during which esteemed ex-members were brought in to dole out advice to current members.
“I can’t imagine anyone ever intended that a president just thinking that things were declassified was enough of a trail to prove that they were declassified,” she added, “and I think that ought to be written into regulation or legislation so that can’t happen again.”
Harman’s comment came as the Justice Department is wrapping up its investigation into Trump’s retention of hundreds of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office.
Trump, 76, has previously claimed that he was within his authority as president to remove the documents from the White House for his personal use due to his Constitutional authority as commander-in-chief to declassify them, pointing to the lack of a formal process for doing so.
“There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News days after the FBI raided his home for the documents in August. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified. Even by thinking about it.”
Trump’s justification has been largely viewed with skepticism, but the way in which a president can declassify documents remains legally murky.
While President Biden is also under investigation for the mishandling of documents found in his personal office in Washington and home in Rehoboth Beach, Del., Biden has not claimed to have declassified the papers found improperly in his possession.
Traditionally, US presidents have directed Cabinet members to carry out declassification for them using the system outlined in an executive order, which was most recently updated in 2009.
Presidents can and have declassified information on their own, but it has been done rarely and in specific circumstances.
For example, in 2004, then-President George W. Bush declassified a briefing he received a month before the 9/11 terror attacks that had warned him of Osama bin Laden’s intent to strike the United States.
Still, Trump’s “thinking about it” reasoning went well beyond any other previous presidential declassifications, primarily because of the lack of a paper trail and a disregard of procedural precedent, said Harman, who served nine terms in Congress before stepping down in 2011.
Former Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), said letting the process go largely undefined creates mistrust in government, adding that “anything that erodes public trust in our institutions or individuals in power” should be addressed.
“We’re gonna have a crisis in trust in our government and trust in our in our institutions because of these perceived abuses of power, and whether it’s willful or unintentional,” she said.
Former Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) – who served 22 years in Congress before leaving office in January – agreed, telling the committee that while some documents may be over-classified, “transparency [in declassification] is vitally important to maintaining trust and confidence.”
Ros-Lehtinen, who chaired the House Foreign Affairs Committee for 12 years during her three decades in the House, also suggested that both laying out the process and providing accountability for violations would help regain the public’s trust.
“What are the penalties that these individuals will be facing? There is a lot of confusion about the classification of documents and when they can be declassified, and who can declassify?” she said. “I don’t know what what this committee can do about that. But the penalties are are unclear.”
Even as the Justice Department nears the end of its investigation in the Trump documents case, it remains unclear whether the 45th president should, can or will face charges.
On Monday, his attorneys asked prosecutors to drop the probe, citing alleged “prosecutorial misconduct and overreach.”
“No one has told me I’m being indicted, and I shouldn’t be because I’ve done NOTHING wrong,” Trump said Wednesday afternoon on TruthSocial. “A TRAVESTY OF JUSTICE & ELECTION INTERFERENCE AT A LEVEL NEVER SEEN BEFORE. REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS MUST MAKE THIS THEIR # 1 ISSUE!!!”
