But what about the declassification issue. If it actually happened or is legal, shouldn’t those documents be available to the public?
The answer is clearly "yes" in the most simple of hypothetical scenarios- ie. where something is clearly declassified in a way that is no longer being contested.
Out in the real world, though it is vastly complicated, with each document or category having its own story and status in the process of being released.
One of the things that complicates is the fact that the President has authority to declassify with regard to traditional areas such as intel, historical happening info, etc. but in some areas there is legislation allowing for agencies to still ask the court to withhold release for reasons x,y,z. Example, President declassifies a bunch of documents but the DOJ has legislation allowing the court to withhold certain documents that relate to an ongoing investigation. Or the court might agree with the declassification in general but allow the CIA to redact certain operational details. Some of those simple requests can take months/years in court.
I know that Trump- for example- was and is pissed because he clearly declassified a bunch of FBI/DOJ shenanigan documents and Christopher Wray has still not released them because he jumped right in and argued a bunch of statutory rights to withhold based on pending cases, operations and methods and all of that. Just sayin, declassifed yes. Released no.
And another thing is that the documents might not be immediately available because the president has declassified large caches of documents in an area and while it is technically declassified for release, the agency has some multi-month or even multi-year process for scrubbing it before putting it up on a searchable site or just declaring everything suitable for release without the president seeing it again. Although a specific request by a party -especially via a court order- could be singled out for release out of sequence. Kash Patel- the former Assist Sec of Defense said Trump's numerous broad declassifications put a lot of material into that category, where it is being processed for actual release. And as I said before, I cannot answer nor can anyone else right now- give it a month or so- know where some of his Mar-A-Largo stuff falls in regard to that.
Okay. That is into the weeds a bit and I am not awake yet.
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