Are you aware that Trump could have tweeted a copy of every top secret document the government has and it would have been perfectly legal?
Yeah, that's not how this works.
If you think it's a good idea to allow a former POTUS to retroactively and implicitly declassify information he is caught with after leaving office, or to issue a sweeping declaration that any documents he takes out of the Oval Office are automatically declassified, I suspect you won't be as blasé when someone of the opposing political party does it.
No?
Well, then, any such claims are necessarily retroactive, or else they're invalid from the get-go. Which do you prefer?
Even if I were to imagine he were technically breaking the law with some of these documents, look at it from a practical standpoint. At one point he could've done whatever he wanted to with any documents, including tweeting them publicly. He may or may not have taken some sensitive information and stored it in a building wholly owned (secured) by the secret service. There is not really any risk here, any crimes would be mere technicalities.
Of all the crimes every President in my lifetime has committed, including Trump, mishandling some secret documents in this way is a total nothingburger. It's almost certainly not a crime and even if it is a crime it's a paperwork technicality crime.
I think it's kind of ironic that - speaking generally - the "patriots" don't seem to care at all that a former president took state secrets after leaving office.
I wonder how big the "nothingburger" would be if it turns out he actually did leak them.
I'm not a Trump supporter.
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/08/trumps-dubious-standing-or...
https://www.cnn.com/2022/08/18/politics/trump-claim-standing...
Ultimately it'll probably come down to Trump thanking his lucky stars that he owns a big chunk of SCOTUS.
If they were already declassified then there wouldn't have been a raid.
They can certainly say that, but since the executive power is constitutionally vested in the president in Article II, it can't be true barring a constitutional amendment. I believe there are court cases already establishing that Congress does not have the authority to limit the President's power to classify and declassify[1]. In this particular case a constitutional argument isn't even necessary since Trump's conduct appears to be protected by the Presidential Records Act.
Of course this is Trump we're talking about, so half the country will happily shred the constitution to "get" him, including many federal employees.
Re: that case; yes for executive classification [The Supreme Court determined in its 1988 decision on Department of the Navy v. Egan that the president’s power over classified information comes from executive authority granted by Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, which says, in part, that the “President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.”]. However, Restricted Data is under the SOLE authority of the Department of Energy[1] to declassify, even if the DoE is under the executive branch. The law is specifically written, in fact, so that the president is not explicitly given the authority to declassify materials, yet does play a role in declassification once the DoE initiates the process, which implies that Congress did not wish to grant the presidency that power. But I'm not a lawyer, and my opinion means little.
Reality Winner had no such authority to declassify documents.