Myth #4: Trump claims that while president 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.”

Absurd. While hypothetically true, this notion is implausible from a practical perspective. Most classified information, even information which passes across the president’s desk, is classified “derivatively.” For national security information to become classified, an individual occupying a position with “original classification authority” must determine that the information meets the requirements for classification. Out of almost 3 million individuals with security clearances, ISOO has reported that less than 2,000 possess original classification authority. Everyone else classifies derivatively, i.e. they simply carry forward the original decision that specific information is classified. In fiscal year 2017 (the last year for which numbers exist), ISOO reported that there were 58,501 original classification decisions compared to 49 million derivative decisions. Traditionally, rarely if ever does the president personally serve as an original classification authority. If the former president personally declassified information contained in documents removed to the White House residence, procedures should have been in place to notify the official who originally classified that information who in turn would have to have notified the potentially millions of individuals who derivatively classified or otherwise had copies of that same classified information. No such procedures appear to have existed during the Trump administration. As such, if Trump had, in fact, declassified the records in question, the original classifier and the myriad of authorized users of that information would remain oblivious to the fact that the information contained therein would no longer have the legal protections of the classification system. One such user was the president’s own national security advisor, John Bolton, who stated, “I was never briefed on any such order, procedure, policy when I came in,” adding that he had never been told of it while he was working there, and had never heard of such a thing after.