I disagree. As you say, Presidents don’t have clearances.
But information is classified. It is a Federal crime to disclose classified information. Whether you encountered it legitimately in the course of your properly-cleared work for the government or you were given it by a disgruntled government worker or you found it on a park bench.
This week Trump could declassify anything he wanted then disclose it. And there’s not much that could be done to stop him. That is yet another of the many loopholes in our body of law that assumed the US President would never be an anti-American gangster / vandal. Oops on us.
But if he forgot to declassify something first and disclosed it anyway that would still be a crime. And come Jan 21 he’s not able to declassify anything. So any disclosure he makes after that date of something that was classified on Jan 19th is also a Federal crime.
Is there some sort of established law that indicates this applies to ex-presidents, too? Can an ex-president reveal classified information against the will of the current president?
I question the idea that the ex-president is allowed to divulge all the national security information he wants to anyone. I understand the rationale for the current president, but once he’s out of the role, he’s also out of the role of deciding what’s classified or not.
This is a murky area of the law. The United States doesn’t have an Official Secrets Act. The Espionage Act of 1917 is notoriously vague, and the courts have been inconsistent on how to apply it.
It’s clear that if you have a clearance and have signed an NDA, you are subject to prosecution for mishandling classified information. It’s not at all clear that if I (as a civilian without a current clearance or NDA) find classified information on a park bench that I’m under any legal restrictions on what I can do with it.
Julian Assange, a prominent current example, isn’t being charged with revealing classified information. He’s being charged with soliciting former PFC Manning to unlawfully disclose classified information and aiding and abetting PFC Manning in that unlawful disclosure. That is clearly illegal. It’s not at all clear that in and of itself simply publishing the material would have violated any U.S. laws.
There simply is no law which specifically binds or does not bind a former President from disclosing classified information. It’s just not something that anyone even considered when the relevant legislation was being drafted.
I personally just don’t see how you can make a practical legal case that Donald Trump could have lawfully told Vladimir Putin things at 11:59 AM on January 20, 2021 but which it becomes criminal to tell him at 12:01 PM on January 21, 2021. The information President Trump had access to was only classified because he said it was. The idea that he could accidentally legally bind his actions after leaving office by failing to formally declassify information which he wanted to disclose and which would have been perfectly legal for him to disclose while in office seems like a pretty convoluted legal argument.
That can’t possibly be true … can it?
It is the Secret Service job to protect the ex-President, wherever he goes. An ex-President might need to travel abroad on business. The Secret Service would have to be prepared to go with him. They would have their passports all sorted out, and ready to travel at short notice.
Let’s refrain from junior modding in GQ. I also have previously instructed you to limit yourself to substantive responses in this forum. You habitually direct inappropriate comments and questions to other posters without making any contribution of your own.
It is reasonable to assume that they have passports. It is not reasonable to assume they have visas. They don’t need a visa for Scotland, but they do for Russia and Russian visas are not generally issued on short notice. Of course, Vladdie could waive the requirement if it pleased him to do so. But as commented upthread, if Agent Orange goes off somewhere the secret service can’t immediately follow he would be deemed to have given up the protection.
IIRC former Presidents (& their spouses?) are entitled to a diplomatic passport for life as a courtesy; presumably their security details would also have diplomatic passports (or at least official passports). It’s completely up to the receiving country to issue or waive any visa requirements (or refuse to admit a traveler otherwise entitled, even a diplomat).
It’s worth noting that Secret Services agents are civil servants, not military personnel. They can always request to be transferred off the protectee’s detail (and given how Presidential duty is usually considered the most prestigious I can’t see such a request being refused.) If an individual agent refuses a lawful order the worst that can happen is for them to be fired and lose their pension; they aren’t facing imprisonment or a death sentence.
I mean the whole scenario is inane, an ex-President is basically treated as a diplomat by other countries, and the fact they travel with a heavily armed security detail means there is an established process for them traveling to various countries. Obviously this is the case, because other private citizens cannot travel across Europe and Asia, predominantly in countries with very restrictive gun laws, with an entire contingent of heavily armed men and women.
Just like when they travel to a country as Head of State, an ex-President’s assistants will have worked out a formal agreement with a representative of the other country before they ever put the President on the plane. An ex-President would not just text Vlad Putin on his phone 20 minutes before his private plane entered Russian airspace asking “hey is it cool if me and my Secret Service detail decamp into your country for awhile?” Once the proper travel arrangements had been secured, the ex-President would basically be traveling with his entourage upon formal invitation of the functionaries of the government of the host country, so issues like “proper visa” and etc just wouldn’t be part of it. They wouldn’t be going through the customs line at the airport.
They need to do their job up until the time Biden is sworn in. Then, they need to arrest him as a trespasser if he hasn’t left the White House by then.
If Trump were to stick around Biden would most likely just start talking to him and tell him one of his whimsical long stories while surrounded by his much larger Secret Service detail. At some point Trump’s head would explode from the combination of forced logic and whimsey and start rambling even more inchorently than is normal for him, then be escorted to the helicopter back to Walter Reed. Only this time to the psych ward.
Donald Trump’s security team isn’t responsible for Biden’s protection. Biden has a team for that. Trump’s team would assist the United States Secret Service Uniformed Division in removing Trump from the White House if needed, but they’re not going to arrest him.
I’m curious what the team detailed to a former-President’s overseas trip looks like. My guess is that it’s more like a few discrete agents than the helicopters, snipers & black SUVs with ‘exotic capabilities’ of a sitting President’s security bubble.
