Trump has “different set of rules” for declassifying documents

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that while he personally would not take classified documents home with him, he insisted that a “different set of rules” applied to former President Trump.

Driving the news: The FBI’s discovery of troves of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last month has landed the former president in legal hot water and prompted intelligence officials to launch a review of the natural security risks stemming from the top secret documents found there.

• The FBI and National Archives have refuted claims by Trump’s legal team that the documents were covered by executive privilege. The Department of Justice last week said that only a “limited set” of documents may have been privileged.
• Former Attorney General Bill Barr and former national security adviser John Bolton have contradicted claims by Trump and his legal team that Trump had a “standing order” to declassify documents as soon as they were removed from the Oval Office.

What they’re saying: “I have lived in the classified world most of my professional career, I personally wouldn’t do that but I’m not the president of the United States,” McCaul said.

• “He has a different set of rules that apply to him. The president can declassify a document on a moment’s notice and we don’t have all the facts,” he added.
• “I know they were taken out of the White House while he was president. And whether or not he declassified those documents remains to be seen, he says he did, I don’t have all the facts there.”
• “There’s a process for declassification, but again the president’s in a very different position than most of us in the national security space.”