Fox News Guest Reads Statement from Trump’s Office Claiming He Had a ‘Standing Order’ Automatically Declassifying All Documents He Took Home with Him

The office of former President Donald Trump issued a statement Friday claiming all documents he removed from the Oval Office and brought to the White House residence were declassified, by definition.

On Monday, the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, where they seized 11 sets of classified documents, as well as other materials that were supposed to have been turned over to the National Archives when Trump left office.

Appearing on Friday’s Hannity, the editor-in-chief of the right-wing site Just the News read an exclusive statement his outlet obtained from Trump’s office.

“I apologize for looking down,” said John Solomon. “It’s so fresh, it’s on my phone. It literally just came in. This is from President Trump’s office. It Just came in a few minutes ago.”

Here is the statement, as read by Solomon on Fox News:

As we can all relate to, everyone ends up having to bring home their work from time to time. American presidents are no different. President Trump, in order to prepare the work the next day, often took documents including classified documents to the residence.

He had a standing order that documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them. The power to classify and declassify documents rests solely with the president of the United States.

The idea that some paper-pushing bureaucrat with classification authority delegated by the president needs to approve the declassification is absurd.

True or not, this explanation is likely to be parsed for days. However, the fact remains that whether the documents removed from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI were classified or not, those official materials were not given to the National Archives as required by law.

UPDATE: After Solomon read Trump’s statement on Fox News, New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman cast doubt on the idea Trump had such a “standing order.”

Just asked a former senior administration official who would be in a position to know about such a thing and they had absolutely no idea what this report is talking about https://t.co/ucEXaHdblg

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 13, 2022

“Just asked a former senior administration official who would be in a position to know about such a thing and they had absolutely no idea what this report is talking about,” she said.

Watch above via Fox News.