Trump displayed a novel approach to making sensitive documents public

When Donald Trump was president, he had a simple understanding of the declassification process for U.S. secrets, which boiled down to this: As the commander in chief, he was also the “declassifier in chief.”

This is relevant again after the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach County, Florida. In a statement on his Truth Social platform, Trump insisted the documents seized by FBI agents were “all declassified.” And the documents were “in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request,” Trump said about his team’s previous interactions with federal authorities over documents.