Former National Intelligence Director: Trump Has ‘Ultimate Declassification Authority’

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe looks on as President Donald Trump presents the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former football coach Lou Holtz, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Dec. 3, 2020. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

A former director of national intelligence said Aug. 12 that it is “virtually impossible” to prosecute people for mishandling classified documents, and asserted that former President Donald Trump has the “ultimately declassification authority” in terms of such documents.

“The president does have ultimate declassification authority. He can literally declassify—and President Trump had that authority, and could declassify anything you want while he was president,” John Ratcliffe, a Republican congressman before Trump appointed him to be director of national intelligence, said on Fox News.

According to documents unsealed earlier Friday, Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was raided by FBI agents on Aug. 8 because of potential violations of several laws, including the Espionage Act, which some legal experts say relates to possessing classified defense information.

An inventory showed that agents seized what they listed as classified, secret, and top secret documents.

Ratcliffe said on Fox that before the search warrant materials were made public, he didn’t believe the raid was about classified materials.

“It has to be more than that because the Department of Justice and the FBI have already set a standard that makes it virtually impossible to prosecute a case like that,” he said, pointing to how former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s possession of classified documents was handled by the FBI, including then-Director James Comey.

“As people talk about Espionage Act and classified documents and all of that, the standard was set in 2016. Remember the Department of Justice and the FBI took the official position that Hillary Clinton, who was in possession of classified documents ... that [being] in possession of that, that wasn’t enough, and that being grossly negligent and being careless, Jim Comey told us, that’s not enough under the Espionage Act. You have to know you’re violating the law,” Ratcliffe said.

“Even if you assume the worst case scenario for President Trump, that there were classified documents in his possession at Mar-a-Lago, that only puts him where Hillary Clinton was. And what the FBI and the Department of Justice would have to show is that he knew the documents were there and he didn’t think they were declassified,” he added.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that all the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago were declassified.

“He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken into the residence were deemed to be declassified,” a Trump spokesperson told Just the News. “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.”

Others weren’t sure.

“He can’t just wave a wand and say it’s declassified,” Richard Immerman, an assistant deputy director of national intelligence during the Obama administration, told NBC News. “There has to be a formal process. That’s the only way the system can work.”

“I’ve seen thousands of declassified documents,” he added. “They’re all marked ‘declassified’ with the date they were declassified.”