Trump Records Negotiator: Former President in ‘Bureaucratic Battle’ Over Classified Documents

Former President Donald Trump speaks with EpochTV's Kash Patel at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 31, 2022. The Epoch Times

Former White House official Kash Patel on Sunday revealed former President Donald Trump has been involved in a battle with the federal government to declassify documents before last week’s FBI raid.

Patel, who was a top official in the Department of Defense, said Trump declassified numerous documents.

“President Trump made me his representative a month ago, and we’ve been in a bureaucratic battle,” he told Fox News on Sunday morning. “We found whole sets of documents we got out to the American public … about 60 percent.”

Patel, who hosts “Kash’s Corner“ for Epoch TV, added that Trump “made it his mission to declassify and be transparent.”

“In October 2020, he issued a sweeping declassification order for every single Russiagate document and every single [former Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton document,” Patel said, adding that “whole sets of documents” were declassified under his watch.

“And this is a key fact ... President Trump, as a sitting president, is a unilateral authority for declassification,” he continued. “He can literally stand over a set of documents and say ’these are now declassified,' and that is done with definitive action immediately.”

Patel further noted that due to the Department of Justice’s latest actions and the FBI’s ongoing investigation, Americans “will never be allowed to see the Russiagate docs or any other docs that President Trump lawfully declassified, and they will hide it from the public.”

Other Details

Late last week, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered the release of the FBI warrant and property record used to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. The documents showed the FBI seized alleged classified documents and said the former president may be under investigation for possibly violating the 1917 Espionage Act and obstruction of justice, although neither the Justice Department nor FBI have released the affidavit in the case.

In late 2020, Trump issued a declassification memo that referred to materials connected to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which has been the subject of intense controversy and scrutiny. Republicans and Trump have long asserted the investigation used fabricated information and anonymous leaks to the press to denigrate the former president.

“I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder. This is my final determination under the declassification review and I have directed the Attorney General to implement the redactions proposed in the FBI’s January 17 submission and return to the White House an appropriately redacted copy,” then-President Trump wrote on Dec. 30, 2020, or just three weeks before Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

After the warrant and property receipt were unsealed, Trump posted to his Truth Social page that the materials the FBI allegedly took were “all declassified.”

“They didn’t need to ’seize' anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request,” he wrote on the website on Aug. 12.

On Sunday, the former president wrote that among other items that were taken by agents, attorney-client material and executive privileged material were removed from Mar-a-Lago.

“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!” Trump wrote.