Trump's Own Chief Of Staff Debunked 'Declassification' Tweets In 2020 Court Filing [View all]

Source: HuffPost

Trump's Own Chief Of Staff Debunked 'Declassification' Tweets In 2020 Court Filing

Years-old testimony from Mark Meadows contradicts the claim that Trump had previously declassified documents seized in the FBI's Mar-a-Lago raid.

By Mary Papenfuss
Aug 23, 2022, 10:26 AM EDT

Donald Trump and his allies continue to claim that many of the classified documents seized by the FBI had actually been declassified by presidential tweets in 2020 — but that claim was long ago debunked in a sworn statement from Trump’s own chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Former Trump administration official Kash Patel was the latest to argue that October 2020 tweets from Trump declassified troves of documents, presumably including ones recovered from the ex-president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida earlier this month.

“In October of 2020, President Trump put out for the world to see, a sweeping declassification order, and he did it via social media — every single Russia-gate doc, every single Hillary-gate doc, every one,” Patel told Fox News host Mark Levin on Sunday.

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Trump did indeed tweet on Oct. 6, 2020: “I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!”

But later that month, Meadows conceded in a sworn declaration to a federal court that Trump’s tweet was not an order to declassify or release those records.

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Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mark-meadows-donald-trump-kash-patel-declassified_n_63042417e4b035629bfd8747