DOJ seeks to call Trump bluff on declassification claims

The Justice Department sought to call the bluff of former President Trump for statements about declassifying the records found at his Florida home, criticizing his legal team for insinuating but failing to fully assert the claim.

The response came after Trumps attorneys on Monday repeatedly noted that Trump had the power to declassify records but stopped short of saying he actually did so despite a month of the former president airing the excuse.

Plaintiff principally seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act (PRA). But plaintiff does not actually assertmuch less provide any evidencethat any of the seized records bearing classification markings have been declassified, the Justice Department wrote in its latest brief.

Such possibilities should not be given weight absent plaintiffs putting forward competent evidence, it added.

Though presidents have broad power to declassify records, doing so sets off a chain of events, as the intelligence agencies that manage such records must take additional steps.

Trumps legal team on Monday argued that the fact that a document taken during the search at Mar-a-Lago was labeled classified does not mean that status was maintained. All told, authorities have recovered more than 300 classified records from the property since January.

The governments stance assumes that if a document has a classification marking, it remains classified irrespective of any actions taken during President Trumps term in office, Trumps legal team wrote.

There is no legitimate contention that the chief executives declassification of documents requires approval of bureaucratic components of the executive branch, it added.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) argued that Trumps team sought to change the subject by holding out the possibility that he could have declassified some of the seized records.

Even if plaintiff had declassified any of these records while he was presidenta proposition that plaintiff does not specifically assert in any of his filings in these proceedings, in a sworn declaration, or through any evidenceany record bearing classification markings was necessarily created by the government and, therefore, is not plaintiffs personal property, it wrote. Energy & Environment Drying lakes exacerbate air quality problems Defense & National Security White House touts shift in momentum in Ukraine

Trump’s desire to keep them would also not outweigh the governments need to review them both for national security purposes and as part of its broader criminal investigation.

The government also offered one of its most concise rejections yet of Trumps claim that he could maintain any sort of executive privilege over the government records he stored at his home.

Plaintiff offers no response to the governments multiple arguments demonstrating that he cannot plausibly assert executive privilege to prevent the executive branch itself from reviewing records that executive branch officials previously marked as classified, the DOJ wrote.