“If you’re the President of the United States, you can declassify by saying I- it’s declassified, even by thinking about it, because you’re sending it to Merg-a-Lago [sic] or to where ever yerthey’re [sic] sending it. And there doesn’t have to be a process–there can be a process but there doesn’t have to be,” really bad filer Donald Trump incorrectly tells one of his administration’s advisors, Sean Hannity, on his Fox show.
First–and you already know this–a President cannot just think something’s declassified and voila! it’s declassified. In fact, Trump’s own legal team cited Executive Order 13526, put in place by the Obama Administration, as the process to declassify material. And yes, there must be a process otherwise scads of additional classified material–including the identities of vulnerable human assets–could incidentally be disclosed.