Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) stopped by CNN this weekend for an interview about the recent indictment of former President Donald Trump on allegations of the willful retention of protected government information and attempted obstruction, and the conversation went about as smoothly as you’d expect.
“He has said time and time again he’s declassified all this material,” Jordan claimed of Donald, when asked about the comments Trump made in 2021 in which he asserted he’d not taken sweeping action to declassify the documents at issue. “This is the most political thing I have ever seen… They’re indicting President Trump on Tuesday for having material that he declassified that was protected by the Secret Service.” Jordan also claimed that Trump saying in that 2021 conversation that he could’ve declassified the documents as president didn’t mean he didn’t take that declassifying action. In fact, Trump also said that declassification action he could now take was restricted. Why would he be saying that if he wasn’t discussing an actively classified doc?
“Do you have evidence that the president — when he was president, now former president — actually declassified these documents before he took them?” Bash asked. Jordan had nothing.
“I go on the president’s word, and he’s said he did, and the Supreme Court said that’s what counts,” Jordan claimed. “So we can have all the things Jack Smith wants to say, but everyone sees this for the political operation it is.” Jordan also claimed that presidents — a category in which he put Trump, though much of this behavior was undertaken out of office — have essentially unilateral authority in the handling of sensitive records, which is not true. If it was actually true, why then would Trump be trying to accuse Barack Obama and other past/current White House occupants of their own document-related misdeeds? That makes no sense — and the Presidential Records Act didn’t stop existing because Jordan buried his head in the sand.
Check out Jordan’s commentary below:
“I go on the president’s word and he said he did.”
CNN’s Dana Bash asks House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) if he has evidence that former President Donald Trump declassified documents before he took them. @SOTU #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/ZeC9k1MJB6
— CNN (@CNN) June 11, 2023
