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Your argument is that the only "process" that Trump needs to follow to declassify is to decide, entirely in his own head, that something is declassified. In said recording, he admits he never did that. Therefore, even by your own lowest-of-the-low bars, he did not do that. And all of his actions over one and a half years regarding the return of said documents contradict the actions of someone who believes he declassified it. Literally 0 people involved in this case agree that it was done, including the person you argue is the only person that matters. Let's start by stating my argument is simply that the "process" is at least 1 person involved in Trump's government can make a subjective determination that it was done. Let's call that the law of basic logic. If not, the document remains classified.
You continue to completely ignore the question of why Trump went through all of this when by your own argument he could have saved himself a lot of time and energy because you know your "strongest" argument is to insist that something that doesn't exist but isn't required is in fact required.
Looks like you still haven't found a declassification process the President needs to go through that Trump failed to go through. Feel free to come back when you do.
A better way of asking something you have failed to answer - under your definition, is intent required in order to declassify something? In other words, if it could be proven that Trump's frame of mind when taking the documents home was not to declassify them, but to hoard secret information, would that establish that the documents were not declassified? Or is it literally impossible to him to steal documents for use outside of his Presidential term, even if he tried?
Looks like you still haven't found a declassification process the President needs to go through that Trump failed to go through. Feel free to come back when you do.
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