President Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, told a federal court that the president’s recent tweets related to the declassification of secretive Trump-Russia documents were not declassification orders and were not meant to reveal any further information related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
“The President indicated to me that his statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification or release of any particular documents, including the FD-302 reports of witness interviews prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in connection with the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller III,” said a declaration signed by Meadows provided in a court filing by the Justice Department with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday. “Instead, the President’s statements related to the authorization he had provided the Attorney General to declassify documents as part of his ongoing review of intelligence activities relating to the 2016 Presidential election and certain related matters. The President’s statements do not require altering any redactions on any record at issue in these or other cases, including, but not limited to, any redactions taken pursuant to any discretionary FOIA exemptions.”
Last week, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to get an answer directly from Trump about whether recent tweets and statements by him constituted orders to declassify, unredact, and make public Mueller’s entire report along with all of the FBI interviews connected to that investigation. Judge Reggie Walton, who has critiqued Attorney General William Barr’s handling of Mueller’s report in the past but also upheld redactions in it, issued that order during a Friday teleconference following an emergency motion filed by BuzzFeed. The outlet is seeking access to the entire April 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 election and unproven claims of Trump-Russia collusion in their ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“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!” Trump tweeted Oct. 6, adding that “all Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!”
The Justice Department told Walton last week it had conferred with the White House counsel’s office about Trump’s tweets and that the White House said Trump’s pronouncements did not constitute specific declassification orders — but the judge said Friday he wanted an answer from Trump himself about the matter.
During the Friday hearing, Walton also referenced Trump’s lengthy interview with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh earlier this month when Trump said: “I’ve fully declassified everything. Everything’s been declassified.”
The Justice Department said in a court filing last week that “there is no basis to require the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reprocess over 4,000 pages of FD-302s from the Special Counsel’s investigation.”
But Walton said he wanted to know that Trump had been personally consulted.
“I do think that a president obviously has the exclusive authority to declassify information. I think when a president makes an unambiguous statement indicating that he was declassifying information, I don’t think anything more, at least based upon what I’ve been told, is required,” Walton said. “And as I indicated previously, not only in the tweet but in a subsequent statement that he made orally, clearly he has indicated his intent to declassify information. And I think the American public has a right to rely upon what their president says about what his intent is. I do think, however, obviously, a president may make a statement about declassifying information that the president can retract before that information is released.”
Another hearing is set for Wednesday.
Mueller’s report concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election in a “sweeping and systematic fashion,” but it “did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s December report outlined a host of problems with the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, especially with its abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process.
Trump’s tweets in early October came hours after Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified two heavily redacted Russia-related documents, including handwritten notes from former CIA Director John Brennan that showed he briefed then-President Barack Obama in 2016 on an unverified Russian intelligence report alleging that former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton planned in July 2016 on tying then-candidate Trump to Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee to distract from her use of a private email server.
Brennan responded to Ratcliffe’s declassification move on CNN, saying, “It is appalling, his selective declassification of information that clearly is designed to advance the political interests of Donald Trump and Republicans who are aligned with him.” Ratcliffe issued a follow-up statement that said that “this is not Russian disinformation and has not been assessed as such by the intelligence community.”
Ratcliffe recently announced that he handed over nearly 1,000 pages of documents to assist in the Justice Department’s inquiry into the Trump-Russia investigators led by U.S. Attorney John Durham, and he said last week that the declassification process had also begun on a 2018 Republican-led House Intelligence Committee report on Russian election interference.
