Left is Now Clinging to Declassification Procedures

This is what they're clinging to now. "Drumpf didn't go through the proper procedure to declassify those documents."

Well, I hate to break it to them, but left-wing Politifact did a whole article on this question years ago when Trump first took office. Here is what Politifact found:

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Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, said that such authority gives the president the authority to "classify and declassify at will."

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Aftergood goes on:

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The official documents governing classification and declassification stem from executive orders. But even these executive orders aren’t necessarily binding on the president. The president is not "obliged to follow any procedures other than those that he himself has prescribed," Aftergood said. "And he can change those."

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Even the left-wing group Lawfare agreed with Aftergood. I quote:

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The national-security experts at the blog Lawfare wrote in the wake of the Post’s revelation that the "infamous comment" by President Richard Nixon -- that "when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal" -- "is actually true about some things. Classified information is one of them. The nature of the system is that the president gets to disclose what he wants."

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Lawfare invoked Nixon saying that "when a president does it, it's not illegal." While Nixon was exaggerating, they said that when it comes to classified info, Nixon was right. The president can do what he wants and is not bound by any "procedure."

So this talking point is a big "fail" on the part of the left. If the FBI takes Trump to court over "not declassifying documents," Trump's lawyers will have a very easy case. This isn't a case of some "murky" law that's up for debate. Pretty much every lawyer agrees that the law is clear that the president can do what he wants with classified info.