“Trump declassified whole sets of materials in anticipation of leaving government that he thought the American public should have the right to read themselves,” Patel told Breitbart News in a phone interview.
"The White House counsel failed to generate the paperwork to change the classification markings, but that doesn’t mean the information wasn’t declassified,” Patel said. “I was there with President Trump when he said ‘We are declassifying this information.'”
“This story is just another disinformation campaign designed to break the public trust in a president that lived on transparency. It’s yet another way to attack Trump and say he took classified information when he did not,” he added.
NBC News reported in February that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) found items “marked as classified national security information” within boxes sent to Mar-a-Lago. NARA made the disclosure in a letter replying to questions from Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY).
Maloney, chair of the House Oversight Committee, had asked NARA if there was classified information within 15 boxes that it recovered from Mar-a-Lago. NARA responded in a February 18, 2022, letter: “NARA has identified items marked as classified national security information within the boxes.”
Patel called the story “disinformation.”
READ MORE
