Senate Republicans are taking to the airwaves to contradict Donald Trump after the former president’s disastrous interview on Fox News where he claimed he could declassify documents just “by thinking about it.”
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘it’s declassified’ — even by thinking about it,” Trump told right-wing host Sean Hannity.
Trump’s assertion prompted Republican lawmakers to push back against his claims, Raw Story reports.
“The process is probably more complicated than that,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told CNN on Thursday.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), also dismissed Trump’s claim, telling the network that there is an actual process to declassify documents that “ought to be adhered to and followed. And I think that should apply to anybody who has access to or deals with classified information.”
“I think the concern is about those being taken from the White House absent some way of declassifying them or the fact that there were classified documents removed — without sort of the appropriate safeguards,” Thune added. “I think that is what the Justice Department is getting at.”
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) added: “I believe there’s a formal process that needs to go through, that needs to be gone through and documented.”
