He held a rally in support of Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance, a Republican, who is running against US Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, for Senator Rob Portmans seat. Amid the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into his handling of classified materials, former President Donald Trump on Wednesday offered a new and rather unusual defense: that he had the power to declassify documents with his mind.
Some legal experts said the idea of Trump telepathically declassifying government documents is absurd. "Claiming that a president can declassify documents even by thinking about it is absurd," Barbara McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor and former U.S. attorney, wrote in an email."While a president has many powers, he must actually execute them. His pardon power, for example, cannot be used just by thinking about it. He must issue a document that executes this power.
The warrant and property receipt from the FBI’s search showed that agents seized nearly two dozen boxes from Trump’s south Florida home, including 11 sets of classified records and some that were labeled “top secret,” the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held U.S. national security information.
The ruling was also a rebuke to the claims made by Trump’s legal team about the former president’s supposed right to hold on to classified documents.