Former official told investigators Trump had 'no standing declassification order' regarding documents, filing says
Prosecutors in former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case said in court filings that a former Trump administration official told investigators that Trump, as president, had "no standing declassification order" regarding documents in his possession.The filings, which are part of special counsel Jack Smith's response to a Trump legal team motion to compel discovery in the case, include notes from prosecutors' interview with a former administration official who the special counsel says "refused recording of the interview." The interview subject stated that having the interview recorded was a "far bigger risk for him in the Trump world," according to FBI notes on the interview, which were included in the filing.The FBI notes, known as a 302, are heavily redacted, obscuring the name of the former official, who is only identified as Per[son] 16, with several pages blacked out in their entirety.MORE: Judge denies Trump's bid to have classified documents case tossed based on Presidential Records ActThe former official, who had "free access to [Trump] and the Oval Office, and was in the Oval Office daily," told prosecutors there was "no standing declassification order," and that they had "never heard of that while in the White House."After the FBI raided Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 and retrieved more than 100 additional documents with classified markings, Trump's team issued a statement to one media outlet claiming that, while still in office, Trump had issued "a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them."Trump was subsequently indicted last June on 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information ranging from U.S.nuclear secrets to the nation's defense capabilities, and took steps to thwart th...