That Meadow-some Fellow

Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Photo: Patrick Semansky/AP

Were I on the jury determining the guilt or innocence of Donald Trump, I would want to know this: What do the people closest to him say about his behavior? Do they support his claims and defenses, or do they contradict him?

If asked who those people might be, I’d say that, historically speaking, the people who know the most about a president’s thought processes, behaviors and goals are usually a trio of officials: the Attorney General, the Vice President, and perhaps most obviously, the Chief of Staff. 

All three of these men in the Trump White House have now spoken to prosecutors and testified under oath in some fashion. And both former AG Bill Barr and former VP Mike Pence have been quite public with their criticisms of their former boss. Now, to be sure, the country would have been better served had they found their spines long before Trump lost the election. But the fact that they are speaking out now at least marks a path for anti-Trump forces within the GOP to follow. And their opinions will likely carry some weight with certain Supreme Court justices such as John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, who will eventually see and rule on the Trump cases in some form or another.

But what of former chief of staff Mark Meadows? He has remained awfully quiet for many months, and then, surprise, surprise, his name did not appear at all in Jack Smith’s D.C. indictment of Trump. That led to speculation that Meadows was cooperating with authorities—until his name did appear as a defendant in the Georgia indictment, indicating that he most certainly had not reached any cooperation deal with District Attorney Fani Willis.

While we don’t have the complete picture, over the weekend we learned a bit more regarding Meadows, indicating that his role in this drama has yet to play out. And as ABC News reported, what Meadows has apparently told prosecutors isn’t good news for Trump on his Mar-a-Lago documents case now pending in Florida federal court.

Standing order? What standing order?

Before we jump into what Meadows reportedly told prosecutors, it’s helpful to review what Trump and his cohorts were claiming one year ago around “declassification.” This will likely be a key theme in Trump’s defense in the Mar-a-lago documents case in Florida.

When news first broke that the FBI had executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022 and had recovered scores of top secret and other classified documents—ones that the ex-president under no circumstances should still have had in his possession—the Trump spin machine went full-whirling-hot-mess.

First, after insinuating that the classified documents had been planted, Trump shifted gears and posted on Truth Social a sweeping claim that the documents in the boxes seized by the FBI were “all declassified.” 

Taking his cue from this, Trump’s political lackey, Kash Patel, who was one of Trump’s National Archives designees to interface with that agency on presidential records matters, claimed that Trump had “issued sweeping declassification orders on multiple occasions.” Patel even claimed that Trump could pull such a thing off by tweet. “In October of 2020, President Trump put out for the world to see a sweeping declassification order,” Patel told Fox host Mark Levin in August of last year. “And he did it via social media.”

In the referenced tweet, Trump had written that he had

fully authorized the total Declassification of any and all documents pertaining to the greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions!

To put an even Trumpier exclamation point on this, another Trump National Archive designee, John Solomon, went on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox to claim Trump “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.”

Not to be outdone by his own sycophants, Trump later insisted that he could even declassify documents mentally, without even communicating this to others. Trump made this startling claim in an interview with Hannity. “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump said. “You’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying it’s declassified, even by thinking about it.”

A broad power to mentally declassify top secret documents and a standing order to declassify all documents taken out of the Oval Office to the residence are quite the claims. And former senior Trump officials dismissed them quickly. As CNN reported,

18 former top Trump administration officials tell CNN they never heard any such order issued during their time working for Trump, and that they believe the claim to be patently false.

Several officials laughed at the notion. One senior administration official called it “bullsh*t.” 

Two of Trump’s former chiefs of staff went on the record and were unequivocal about the lack of any supposed standing order.

“Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given,” said John Kelly. Kelly served as White House chief of staff for 17 months from 2017 to 2019. “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.”

Then there was Mick Mulvaney, who succeeded Kelly as acting White House chief of staff. He also dismissed the claim and affirmed that he was “not aware of a general standing order” during his tenure.

So, if two former chiefs of staff say the standing order was bogus, what about Meadows? As the final chief of staff under Trump, Meadows had his eyes on the day to day workings of the White House and how classified materials were handled. So what did he have to say?

According to ABC News, Meadows told prosecutors that

he could not recall Trump ever ordering, or even discussing, declassifying broad sets of classified materials before leaving the White House, nor was he aware of any “standing order" from Trump authorizing the automatic declassification of materials taken out of the Oval Office…. 

Three chiefs of staff, all in agreement here, stacked against a patently absurd, self-serving claim. I’m dubious that even a jury made up of red county folks from Florida will buy it.

But it doesn’t matter anyway, right?

The kinds of documents Trump had in his possession after leaving office included national security defense information, including a top secret plan drafted by General Mark Milley to attack Iran. Under the Espionage Act, with which Trump is charged, it is illegal to willfully retain such documents after the government has asked for their return. This is the case irrespective of whether the document was formally classified or even later declassified. 

After all, the Espionage Act that governs here was enacted before the modern classification system was established. All that matters for purposes of the criminal statute here is whether the documents themselves comprised national defense information, the government had demanded their return, but Trump had willfully retained them. Their formal classification is irrelevant.

Trump could and likely will argue that whether he believed the documents to be declassified goes to his knowledge and therefore his willfulness, which is necessary to prove criminal intent under the Espionage Act. His subjective belief that the documents were all declassified is relevant, his lawyers could argue, to whether Trump intended to hang on to top secret, national defense information because he believed them to no longer be top secret.

My guess is that Judge Aileen Cannon will be inclined to allow the “declassification” defense in court, if Trump’s lawyers believe they can credibly raise it. And Jack Smith may not try to exclude the defense as a matter of law, thereby avoiding an appealable issue that could later overturn a conviction. He instead could allow the jury to weigh Trump’s absurd claims about mental declassification against what the evidence actually shows.

The Evidence: Trump knew that the documents were still classified

Here’s where Meadows will also play a key role. Not only did he tell prosecutors that there was never, to his knowledge, any broad declassification or standing order to declassify, he busted Trump’s claim wide open with some inadvertent receipts.

There is an infamous incident, featured prominently in Smith’s indictment, that took place on July 21, 2021 at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Resort in New Jersey. Trump was giving an interview—which, ironically, he insisted be tape recorded so that he wasn’t misquoted—to help Meadows with his forthcoming book, The Chief’s Chief. Present were Meadows’s ghostwriter and publicist, but not Meadows himself.

That recording, which was obtained by the media and by Jack Smith’s office, revealed that Trump was holding up and showing the top secret war plan against Iran, authored by Gen. Milley. Then, Trump says these fateful words: “See, as president I could have declassified it, now I can’t. … Isn’t that interesting? It’s so cool.” 

As if that recording weren’t already a slam dunk against his “mental declassification” defense and claim he had no knowledge the documents were still classified, there’s also damning stuff in writing. 

An early draft of the prologue to Meadows’s book describes Trump having a classified war plan “on the couch” at his office in Bedminster. But tellingly, the reference to the classified war plan was removed by Meadows before publication. Why? Meadows told prosecutors that he had asked the paragraph be changed because that it would be “problematic” if Trump had such a document in his possession.

It sure would.

When word of the audio recording came out, Trump tried outright to deny the existence of the war plan at that meeting. He told Fox anchor Bret Baier that he “didn’t have a document, per se,” then suggested that he had only shown his guests newspaper and magazine articles. “Bret, there was no document,” Trump insisted.

I suppose it will come down to Trump’s fine and ever-honest word, should he even take the stand, against the audio recording, the draft prologue to the Meadows book, and the testimony of all the other people present in the room. 

There should be no reasonable doubt in the end.