Who can declassify what? And is it possible for the President of the United States to have that power? That seems to be the question up for debate at the moment.
Representative Adam Schiff responded with disdain on Sunday in response to Donald Trump’s assertion that the president of the United States can declassify top-secret items “just by thinking about it” without going through an official review process.
When Host Jake Tapper responded to the remarks that Trump offered in response to Fox’s Sean Hannity last week, Schiff commented that Trump’s comments “don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind.”
He also said that if they really represented the beliefs of the former president, they led to him becoming “more dangerous” than Democrats and other critics of his previously believed.
“With that view, he could simply spout off on anything he read in a presidential daily brief…to a visiting Russian delegation or any delegation, and simply say, ‘Well, I thought about it, and therefore when the words came out of my mouth they were declassified’,” Schiff was warned when he appeared in the CNN’s State of the Union.
The firestorm between the congressman and his constituents aside there are some disagreements regarding the power the president has to disclose information certain experts believe that a formal procedure is required, while those who advocate for greater executive power think otherwise. It is worth noting that Trump’s lawyers haven’t denied they had the records classified in any court filings so yet.
The former president remains the center of an ongoing investigation over the illegal storage of presidential papers including classified material at Mar-a-Lago, the resort he owned, and his home located in Palm Beach, Florida.
He has been spinning various defenses of his actions, as well as theories regarding the investigation itself. In that same conversation with Hannity this week, Trump was seen to seriously claim it was possible that the FBI was searching for more emails belonging to Hillary Clinton in his house.
Separately, the former president and his advisers are still under two criminal investigations in connection with their attempts to thwart the 2020 presidential election as well as the events of the 6th of January in Georgia as well as Washington DC.
It’s obvious that Trump is in trouble – and the Democrats have no plans of letting up on the former president. They’re scared. They don’t want to see Trump even being able to run for president in 2024. They know that it could be problematic for them, regardless of whether Trump runs against Biden as happened in 2020 or if the Democrats put up someone entirely different to represent their party.
Schiff is also a part of the January 6 investigation, so clearly, there’s a conflict of interest. And Schiff has never been a fan of the former president.
Schiff, a Democratic part of the panel that is investigating the January. 6 2021 attack at the Capitol stated that he is likely to approve criminal referrals for people involved in the incident. However, it will require a unanimous vote of the panel’s nine members.
The committee has focused a large portion of its investigation on the actions of former President Donald Trump and his associates after the presidential election in November which culminated in the fatal Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Trump is claiming falsely that he is not able to provide any evidence the widespread fraud of voters affected the outcome of the election and the election should have been declared a winner.
“It is, I think, apparent that there is evidence that Donald Trump was involved in breaking several of those laws,” Schiff said in connection to the attack on Jan. 6. on”CNN’s “State of the Union.”
What happens next is anyone’s guess. We already know where Schiff stands on it all.
