Back in June, former Devin Nunes staffer, Trump White House staffer, and chief of staff to the Secretary of Defense Kash Patel told a podcast audience he planned to publish classified documents at the National Archives that, he claims, Donald Trump declassified prior to leaving office, ABC News reports.
Donald Trump had requested the National Archive grant Patel and disgraced conservative propagandist John Solomon access to his non-public papers that actually weren’t stolen and hidden in a basement storage closet at a geriatric supper club and reception venue.
“I’ve never told anyone this because it just happened,” Patel said in an interview on a pro-Trump podcast on June 22. “I’m going to identify every single document that they blocked from being declassified at the National Archives, and we’re going to start putting that information out next week.”
Patel claims Trump declassified a slew of documents relating to the Mueller investigation which would prove to anyone listening to a pro-Trump podcast that he was most definitely and irrevocably proven to be set up and that he had absolutely nothing to do with Russia during the 2016 election, as he claimed, but which evidence clearly contradicts. (I mean, his own son–the alleged drug abuser, not the one with the obvious issues trying to gain his father’s love–said he would “love it” if his dad’s campaign could get help from the Russia government in an email he himself released.)
The National Archives has many of Trump’s papers, and if Trump had declassified a number of documents, he would have had to register those with the National Security Director, who would then undertake the process of protecting compartmentalized information. Those processes didn’t get done if the National Archives still has those documents classified, so someone is lying.
The timing of Patel’s statement is also curious: it was made two weeks after Justice Department lawyers who specialize in national security matters met with Mar-a-Lago lawyers and were shown boxes of classified material kept in a basement storage room.