I’m really sick of this “he declassified it” argument. I get it from a legal standpoint… but let’s say that he did declassify these documents. Why would it be a good thing to declassify documents related to the nation’s nuclear weapons, defense systems and potential military vulnerabilities?
I get that there’s a legal argument in terms of criminality… but from a non-pedantic law focused standpoint it just seems absurd.
It’s also nonsense, as while the President has authority to declassify many types of documents, there is still a specific process for that which involves paperwork, which of course was never done… and for more sensitive classes of documents, the President does not have unilateral authority to declassify.
Even declassified, they are still property if the government. It is a nonargument.
The theory, such as it is, is that the president is accountable to the citizenry both through the congress (via impeachment) and to the public (via elections). So if the president does grossly incompetent things like declassify information without telling anyone, they could be impeached or voted out.
A fundamental problem with any government is that it relies on people of good character to function.
Once enough sociopaths and political partisans and greedy hacks get elected, we’re basically screwed. The law can’t save us from that much human poison.
