Trump says he declassified documents — Pence says otherwise: report

20 August 2023

During a Sunday appearance on ABC's This Week, ex-Vice President Mike Pence said he was unaware of any efforts made by former President Donald Trump's effort to declassify documents, The New York Times reports.

"I was never made aware of any broad-based effort to declassify documents," Pence said.

In June, United States Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith indicted the 2024 MAGA hopeful "on thirty-seven counts for unlawfully retaining classified documents at his Palm Beach, Florida Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office and four additional charges for obstructing the National Archives' efforts to reclaim them."

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The former president, according toThe Times, "has long insisted that he had issued a 'standing order' to declassify papers and that any he brought home were automatically declassified."

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was recently indicted by a Fulton County Superior Court grand jury along with Trump on charges related to their efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said the same Sunday, ABC News exclusively reports.

According to ABC, Meadows told Smith "that he 'could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any 'standing order' from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office.'"

The former vice president said during his interview, "There is a process that the White House goes through to declassify materials. I'm aware of that occurring on several cases over the course of our four years. But I don't have any knowledge of any broad-based directive from the president. But that doesn't mean it didn't occur; it's just not something that I ever heard about."

The New York Times' full report is available at this link (subscription required).

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