Trump says he ‘wanted to share with Russia’ | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Executive Order 13526 currently governs national security information. Lawfare, a blog created by well-known lawyers on the law and national security, said it is not illegal for the president to disclose classified information as he sees fit.

“The reason is that the very purpose of the classification system is to protect information the President, usually through his subordinates, thinks sensitive,” attorneys wrote in the blog post reacting to the reports. “So the President determines the system of designating classified information through Executive Order, and he is entitled to depart from it at (sic) well.”

However, the blog post does say Trump’s actions could constitute a violation of his oath of office, even if he had done so through “carelessness or neglect.”

“In taking the oath President Trump swore to ‘faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States’ and to ‘preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’ to the best of his ability,” attorneys wrote. “It’s very hard to argue that carelessly giving away highly sensitive material to an adversary foreign power constitutes a faithful execution of the office of President.”

A former senior U.S. intelligence official told McClatchy the disclosure was “an intelligence officer’s worst nightmare.”

Trump’s alleged disclosure to the Russian government followed his firing of FBI Director James Comey on May 9. Trump said in an interview that Comey’s ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia in the 2016 presidential election had factored into Trump’s decision to fire him.

About an hour after the original tweets, Trump again tried to turn the focus on those leaking information to the press.