Thursday, March 28

Trump’s approach to classified documents breaks presidential tradition


Greetings, OnPolitics readers! It’s Amy here with today’s top stories out of Washington.

After the military raid that killed Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama sought to briskly release information as soon as the Al Qaeda leader was confirmed dead May 2, 2011, reporter Bart Jansen writes.

Obama’s consultation with intelligence agencies to determine what intelligence to release publicly sharply contrasts with Donald Trump’s assertion that as president he could declassify documents merely by thinking about it – a claim he made after FBI agents seized about 100 classified documents from his Mar-a-Lago estate in August.

Trump both single-handedly declassified documents and also deferred to the intelligence community to keep documents secret during his team. In 2019, he tweeted a previously classified satellite photo of an Iranian rocket mishap, which he said he had the “absolute right to do.”




www.usatoday.com

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