A “standing order” that former President Donald Trump has claimed authorized him to instantly declassify documents removed from the Oval Office could not be found by either the Justice Department or Office of Director of National Intelligence.
The disclosure by the agencies was made in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed last August by Bloomberg News, which sued ODNI and the Justice Department’s national security division for a copy of Trump’s so-called standing order — if one existed.
Trump insisted that he had such a declassification order after the FBI found top secret materials at his Mar-a-Lago home last year. He has since been charged in the case by Special Counsel Jack Smith, making him the first former president to face federal allegations of criminal conduct.
Last month, in a court filing, government attorneys asserted to Bloomberg News that they could neither confirm nor deny whether the agencies had such a document, citing the ongoing criminal investigations against Trump.
But government attorneys have since confirmed in a letter sent Thursday to Bloomberg News that each agency “possesses no records responsive to your request” about the existence of a declassification standing order.
The government was compelled to make the disclosure about the standing order after a judge in a similar case in Massachusetts ordered the agencies to say whether the standing order or records referencing it exist.
Spokespeople for Trump, the Justice Department and ODNI did not immediately respond to requests for comments.
The plausibility of such a standing order was dismissed as nonsensical last year by more than a dozen former White House officials.
While U.S. presidents can declassify any document at will, former intelligence officials have said that such a “standing order” would have to be memorialized in writing and shared with the intelligence community, specifically the Office of Director of National Intelligence, as well as the agency that classified the document in the first place.
On Aug. 12, a few days after the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social, that the records taken by the FBI were “all declassified.” The “standing order” defense was promoted that evening on Fox News by John Solomon, a journalist who Trump designated to speak for him on the case.
The indictment against Trump was unsealed by a federal court in Miami June 9 and outlined 37 counts of seven charges including willful retention of national defense information, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.
(Chris Strohm and Stephanie Lai contributed to this report.)
