Yes, vice presidents can declassify documents

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to research documents with categorized markings discovered at President Joe Biden’s Delaware residence and a Washington, D.C. workplace. The documents have been from Biden’s time as vice president. 

This has prompted comparisons to the invention of tons of of categorized documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property. Trump has claimed that the documents discovered at his Florida property have been “all declassified.”

While Biden has not claimed he declassified the documents discovered at his residence and workplace, that hasn’t stopped some people on social media from claiming the vice president “does not have the authority” to declassify documents – implying Trump’s protection wouldn’t apply to Biden.

Several VERIFY readers requested the staff if the vice president can declassify documents. 

Can the vice president declassify documents?

Yes, the vice president can declassify documents. 

There is “zero truth” to the claims that vice presidents can’t declassify documents whereas they’re in workplace, Kel McClanahan, govt director of the National Security Counselors, informed VERIFY.

Richard Immerman, a historian and professor at Temple University, agrees. Biden had the flexibility to declassify documents when he served as vice president throughout the Obama administration, he stated in an e-mail.

A vice president’s authority to declassify information stems from Executive Order 13526, which former President Barack Obama issued in 2009 when Biden was vice president. That order specifies who’s allowed to categorise and declassify information.

It says that “the authority to classify information originally may be exercised only by the President and Vice President,” in addition to “agency heads and officials designated by the president.”

There are 4 classes of people that can declassify a doc underneath the chief order: the official who initially categorized it, their successor, a supervisory official of both the originator or their successor, or officers given declassification authority in writing by an company head.

The govt order “explicitly names the vice president as one of the original classification authorities,” which suggests they may declassify any information their workplace initially categorized, McClanahan defined. 

But what about documents that have been initially categorized by different workplaces or companies? Though some specialists have differing opinions on whether or not vice presidents are thought-about supervisory officers, McClanahan stated the vice president has the identical wide-ranging authority to declassify documents because the president. 

“As a matter of academic constitutional law, there may be a question of whether or not the vice president is in that chain of command that can declassify things,” McClanahan stated. “However, as a matter of practice for at least the last ten years, if not much longer, it’s been a longstanding practice in the executive branch to say that the vice president has delegated authority from the president and should be treated as pretty much the same.”

There are another exceptions to what the president or vice president can declassify, together with information coping with nuclear secrets and techniques. This information is ruled by a separate regulation known as the Atomic Energy Act.

The president might additionally explicitly forbid the vice president from declassifying a selected piece of information, McClanahan stated.