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New evidence tightens the vise on Trump’s magical declassification story
Fresh reporting on May 17 undercut Donald Trump’s claim that he could simply declare classified records declassified by taking them out of the White House. The new detail mattered because it went straight at the centerpiece of his public defense in the documents case: not denial, but a broad, legally dubious assertion that he had unilaterally changed the status of the records. That argument was already getting battered by the National Archives’ public posture and by the basic structure of federal classification rules. On this day, the story got worse for Trump because the evidence being discussed pointed in the opposite direction of his television-friendly version of events.