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The moment I’ve been waiting for with bated breath has happened. Trump has finally said he can declassify documents just by thinking about it. A ‘The Hill’ article from 9/21/2022 said “There doesn’t have to be a process, as I understand it,” Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”
“If you’re the president of the United States, you can declassify just by saying, ‘It’s declassified.’ Even by thinking about it.”
This interpretation is interesting because it becomes very hard to verify, to prove or disprove, what Trump thought about. Except, as a philosophy Professor of mine liked to say, this definition of Declassification does no work.
The idea of declassification is that the information is contained is to be treated differently, be it made available to the general public if it is entirely declassified, or to be seen by a wider circle if the classification is reduced.
If the document is declassified but the markings aren’t changed, no one is told to treat the document any differently and the document is in fact, not treated any differently what was the effect of…
