Former White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney recently shared details about the process of declassifying documents amid the Federal Bureau of Investigations' (FBI) probe into whether or not former President Donald Trump violated laws removing documents from the White House.
During an appearance on Newsweek, Mulvaney weighed in on the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago as he also shared his reaction to the reports of remarks on individuals within Trump's "inner circle."
"I was surprised by some of the reporting on some of the comments by some of the president's inner circle," Mulvaney said on Newsmax's "National Report."
"Yes, any president of the United States has broad authority to declassify documents," Mulvaney said. "That being said, there's a formal structure to doing that. You can't just sort of stand over a box of documents, wave your hand and say these are all declassified. That's not how the system works."
The former Trump administration official spoke in reference to documents detailing conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Those government documents had been declassified sometime during Trump's presidency amid his first impeachment trial.
"You don't just sort of get to say off the top of your head, 'oh, everything that I see today' and that seems to be the argument that some of the president's insider team is making right now," he said.
One looming question about the transportation of the documents is whether or not it violates the Espionage Act since they were held at Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. However, Trump's team is arguing that the documents in question were declassified.
Mulvaney, per Newsweek, also said, "that a standing order to declassify documents taken to Mar-a-Lago did not exist when he was chief of staff but acknowledged that one could have been introduced later."
In a previous statement released to Fox News on Friday last week, Trump's team argued: "President Trump, in order to prepare for 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."
Mulvaney's latest remarks come shortly after his chief of staff predecessor, John Kelly, spoke to CNN on Thursday, August 18. At the time, he said, "Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given."
"And I can't imagine anyone that worked at the White House after me that would have simply shrugged their shoulders and allowed that order to go forward without dying in the ditch trying to stop it," Kelly said.
Mulvaney also appeared on CNN on Friday, August 19 where he informed CNN's Erin Burnett of the system that had been implemented to preserve government documents but he also admitted that he had witnessed "the president rip documents in half. Not confidential documents, but just draft documents. Not supposed to do that but there's a way to fix it, which is you just find the pieces and you tape them together."
