Trump says he’ll release ALL the government data and case files on the 2016 Russian election investigation ( Mueller) and the Hillary Clinton Email probes….
BuzzFeed News has called the President out and requested the info via a Freedom of Information throw down….
THAT has put the Justice Department in a bad place….
Info in the files for BOTH cases HAS TO have classified ‘sources and methods’ info in them…
Trump may not give a shit but one would image the intelligence community IS having a hemmorige over this….
The President CAN in fact declassify ANYTHING he wants….
So?
The Justice Department HAS had to tell a Federal Judge to disregard the Donald Trump tweet saying he would release EVERYTHING….
‘Ah, Your Honor our guy tends to LIE’. might be the best title on this?….
Attorneys from the Department of Justice argued in court on Tuesday that President Trump’s tweets authorizing the “total declassification of any & all documents” related to the Russia investigation and Hillary Clinton’s emails should not be considered real declassification orders.
Why it matters: BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold cited the tweets in an emergency motion last week seeking to gain access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted report as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
Details: DOJ attorneys told District Judge Reggie Walton, who demanded that the DOJ clarify its standing on the tweets, that they conferred with the White House counsel’s office “and were informed that there was no order requiring declassification or disclosure of any document at issue in this case.”
- “The Department was further informed that the President’s statements on Twitter were not self-executing declassification orders and do not require the declassification of any particular documents,” the attorneys wrote in a filing.
- “Although in May 2019, the President did delegate declassification authority to the Attorney General, to date, the Attorney General has not exercised that declassification authority to release any of the redacted material in this case based on the President’s Twitter statements.”
The bigger picture: This is not the first time that the DOJ has shown that the president’s tweets should not be taken as official directives or “pure fact,” according to USA Today….
Along with this we ANOTHER Trump effort to go legal against a political rival amounting to NOTHING….
‘Unmasking’ Probe Quietly Ends Without Charges
“The federal prosecutor appointed by Attorney General William Barr to review whether Obama-era officials improperly requested the identities of individuals whose names were redacted in intelligence documents has completed his work without finding any substantive wrongdoing,” the Washington Post reports.