It has long been universally established that when it comes to the possession and declassification of so-called “classified documents,” U.S. Presidents enjoy a unique power and privilege.
In 2017, the New York Times acknowledged that “Mr. Trump has the power to declassify or disclose anything he wants.” The Times quoted Steven Afterfood, a government secrecy specialist, who said that “the classification system is not based on a law” and that “it is an expression of presidential authority, and that means that the president and his designees decide what is classified, and they have the essentially unlimited authority to declassify at will.”
In 2017, CNN posed the following question: “If the president says it, is it no longer classified?” The article goes on to quote Senator Jim Risch, an Idaho Republican, who asserted that “the minute the President speaks about it to someone, he has the ability to declassify anything at any time without any process.”
While the Media and Democrats—one in the same—have repeatedly tried to reverse course and suggest that President Trump’s possession of so-called classified documents since leaving office is tantamount to some crime, the narrative never put Trump in any legal jeopardy.
Revelations that both former Vice President Mike Pence and Joe Biden were in possession of classified documents themselves only ensured that such a prosecutorial strategy would fail. Neither Pence nor Biden in his capacity as either a U.S. Senator or Vice President wielded such power as Trump to declassify documents at will.
Instead, the Democrats settled on a strategy to prosecute Trump for violations of the Espionage Act. After all, as critic of U.S. government secrecy policy Steven Aftergood asserted, “the classification system is not based on law” and the Presidential Records Act likewise doesn’t have a criminal provision—it’s merely an Act introduced by the Nixon administration, which created confusion about what belonged to the President and what belonged to the “Government.”
In November of 2020, the Washington Post wrote that “As an ex-president, Trump could disclose the secrets he learned while in office, current and former officials fear.” While the article acknowledged that even after leaving office, Trump would have access to all and any records of his administration, buried deep in the body of the article was the prosecutorial strategy being employed today by the corrupt Department of Justice; not only their strategy, but the Democrats’ motivation for the present witch hunt.
The article professes that “Trump has also demonstrated a willingness to declassify information for political advantage, pushing his senior officials to reveal documents from the 2016 probe of Russian election interference and possible links to Trump’s campaign.”
In other words, the Deep State and Democrats feared that Trump would declassify and make public information that would incriminate them for their crimes.
Shockingly, this seemingly forgettable and inconsequential article from the Washington Post from 2020 spells out the strategy being employed at present — to persecute Trump and coverup their crimes.
The November 2020 article reports with great consternation how “last month, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, a Trump loyalist, made public a set of handwritten notes and a referral to the FBI concerning intelligence that the United States had obtained on Russia and its belief that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign would try to tie the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails to Russia to deflect from the controversy over Clinton’s use of a private email server.”
The Durham investigation has since confirmed that the Clinton campaign and outgoing Obama Administration did, in fact, do just that — invented the Trump-Russia collusion hoax to distract from the Clinton scandal.
The Democrats have long feared that Trump would expose them even after Biden was installed in the White House. They were desperate for a strategy to deal with this possibility. That strategy was mentioned in the Washington Post’s article.
“The last line of defense, like so many chapters in Trump’s presidency,” the article predicts, “would pose unprecedented considerations: criminal prosecution. The Espionage Act has been successfully used to convict current and former government officials who disclose information that damages U.S. national security. It has never been used against a former president. But as of Jan. 20, 2021, Trump becomes a private citizen, and the immunity he enjoys from criminal prosecution vanishes.”
That’s precisely what the Democrats and the corrupt special counsel Jack Smith are pursuing — violations of the Espionage Act.
Like the leak of Trump’s conversation with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in late 2019, which was falsely used to impeach Trump for “quid pro quo,” this latest leaked recording of Trump referring to “secret” documents, which refutes previous allegations that Trump planned to attack Iran — it was General Milley and the Pentagon who had plans to attack Iran rather than Trump — is being used to secure the criminal conviction of Trump.
Never mind that Hillary Clinton may have divulged classified information on national television about our nuclear arsenal during a Presidential debate in 2016, saying, “There’s about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so.”
Or that Vice President Biden may have divulged classified information at a dinner in Washington D.C. when the buffoon Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory.
Or that in 2012, the Obama administration “arranged for Hollywood filmmakers to have special access to government officials involved in the commando operation that killed Osama bin Laden; leaking classified information to Hollywood filmmakers so they could make the movie Zero Dark Thirty.
The Democrats laid this track and trap for Trump in 2020 — set the narrative in motion — when the Washington Post predicted that “experts agreed that the biggest risk Trump poses out of office is the clumsy release of information. But they didn’t rule out that he might trade secrets, perhaps in exchange for favors, to ingratiate himself with prospective clients in foreign countries or to get back at his perceived enemies.”
Who recorded Trump’s conversation about the “secret” documents? Who just leaked it to CNN? How long have Democrats been planning this?
One thing is clear—the Democrats are once again falsely accusing Trump of crimes which Biden and Democrats have actually committed.
It was Biden—not Trump—who committed a real quid pro quo when he withheld military aid to Ukraine in exchange for getting the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden and Burisma fired. It was Biden, who likely exchanged secrets in exchange for favors—with Burisma and the Communist Chinese and likely countless others.
The latest leaks don’t incriminate Trump, they incriminate the Democratic Party.
Drew Allen, the Millenial Minister of Truth, is the host of “The Drew Allen Show” podcast and a widely published columnist and political analyst. He is the Vice President of Client Development at Publius PR and also the Editor of the Publius National Post. Subscribe to read his work at drewallen.substack.com.