Trump Swears He Declassified Docs; New Lawsuit Says Put Up Or Shut Up

Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that he declassified the documents that he was hiding at Mar-a-Lago, and a new lawsuit is basically saying to "put up or shut up." The lawsuit, filed by the ACLU against several government agencies, is asking for all the material related to this alleged declassification. The request was actually made months ago, but several agencies didn't respond. Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

The A C L U has now filed a lawsuit essentially telling the federal government that Trump says he's declassified all these documents you took from Mar Lago. So all we're saying in our lawsuit is put up or shut up, right? If he did issue a standing order to declassify these documents, the lawsuit says you would have a record of that. So all we are asking is comply with our Freedom of Information Act request to send us that standing order that we just, we just wanna see it, we just wanna know that it exists. We just wanna make sure you know that Donald Trump's not out there lying to everybody. Oh, heaven forbid that that's not something he would do. Right? So here's the thing about this lawsuit, which by the way, I absolutely love, um, the A C L U, like shortly after Trump started making all his claims that, oh, I've declassified everything, the A C L U sprung into action and they requested from multiple government agencies via Freedom of Information Act requests, any information they have about these documents being declassified.

Right? Uh, here's what they say. It appears that one of two things must be true. Either Mr. Trump potentially imperiled national security by stealing classified documents and storing them in a hotel, or Mr. Trump potentially imperiled national security by issuing a standing order that arbitrarily declassified sensitive materials based solely on their physical movement within the White House. And they're saying if such a standing order exists, it would have to be recorded so that the government agencies in charge of the documents would know that these were now declassified. That's how the process works. Even if the president gets a hold of a document and says, I declassify you, there's still paperwork that has to be filled out in order for the entire government to understand that this document is in fact declassified, standing over it and saying, I declassify you, is not the end of the process.

And if that's the only thing that happened, then it is not legitimate in the eyes of the government. And that, of course, is what, uh, uh, the A C L U is trying to figure out. And they know the answer, like that's the whole point of this. They're not trying to make sure Trump didn't lie. They're trying to prove to the public that Trump did lie. Cuz we, we all know it happened. We just need that extra concrete proof from the government. Now, you do have several agencies that did respond to the Freedom of Information Act request, and therefore they're not subject to this lawsuit by the A C L U. One of them is the Department of Homeland Security that came back after their request and they said, uh, basically quote, um, there's no standing order matching Trump's description, uh, that could be found. But the CIA and the NSA have yet to respond. Now, they were required to, but they didn't. And that is why those two agencies are now the targets of this lawsuit. We'll see what happens. Um, we know what's going to happen,

You know, whether they respond or not. We know there is no standing order. Again, Homeland Security is not the only government department that confirmed yeah, we don't have this standing order. So that's probably not a thing. Other agencies did admit the same thing. The cia, the nsa, they're just a little behind. So we'll give them a little bit of time. Hopefully they respond to this lawsuit release, what they have, if they have it. And if not, it only adds to the government's lawsuit and criminal investigation showing that Donald Trump did not in fact declassify anything. And therefore the felony charges he could be hit with are going to be much more severe.