Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that former President Donald Trump claiming a president can declassify information by thinking about it showed how dangerous he is to the national security of the United States.
Last week on Fox News, Trump said, “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it. You know, there’s different people who say different things. As I understand, there doesn’t have to be. If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.
Anchor Jake Tapper asked, “Is that how it works, sir?”
Schiff said, “No, that’s not how it works. Those comments don’t demonstrate much intelligence of any kind. If you could declassify by thinking about it, he’s more dangerous than we may have thought because, with that view, he could simply spout off on anything he read in the presidential daily brief or anything he was briefed on by the CIA director to a visiting Russian delegation or any other delegation and simply say well I thought about it and therefore when the words came out of my mouth, they were declassified. People work hard to get that information. That information protects American lives and for him to treat it so cavalierly shows both what a continuing danger the man is but also how very little regard he has for anything but himself.”
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