While on the campaign trail, Donald Trump assigned nicknames to his opponents. He lashed out at "Crooked" Hillary Clinton and is now trying to paint President Joe Biden as corrupt. As it happens, it's Donald who is as crooked as a dog's hind leg. And so is his former chief-of-staff Mark Meadows.
Rule of Law by Murray Waas reports:
Months after he had left office, former president Donald Trump directed his former chief-of-staff, Mark Meadows to leak highly classified government records regarding Peter Strzok, the former Deputy Assistant Director of the FBI's Counterintelligence Division, to the press. In the final days of Trump's presidency, Meadows had removed the classified files from the White House, which Trump and Meadows believed would discredit Strzok.
The explosive ramifications of such a knowing and willful leak of classified information by Trump, or by someone on his behalf, at his direction, after he left office, is that Trump would have potentially committed a felony.
So, that's at least one possible reason why Trump wanted to hang on to the classified documents he was supposed to return.
As president, Trump enjoyed a virtually absolute and unfettered constitutional authority to declassify virtually almost any government secrets he so wished. But once gone from office, Trump no longer had any legal authority or power beyond that of an ordinary citizen to declassify government papers or; much less leak classified records. Any provision of classified information at that time would be a crime.
Brad Moss, an attorney specializing in national security law, explained to me: "Anything Trump had in his possession that was still classified and that he gave to a reporter or anyone else unauthorized to receive it, after 12:01 pm on January 21, 2021, was unlawful as a legal matter."
I'm sure this isn't the only instance of Trump committing a felonious act with classified documents.
Karma isn't a bitch. She's a big beautiful mirror.
A judge ruled late last month that Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray can be deposed as part of a lawsuit from ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok who sued over his 2018 termination. Strzok can question Trump under oath.
