President Can De-Classify What He Wants?

There’s a lot of talk going around about either the President’s “power” or the President’s “right” to declassify state secrets – with the suggestion that because classification and de-classification are executive acts, the President can do whatever he likes in this respect. We are dealing in straight Constitutional analysis, most likely with little pertinent case law, but it is important to think about the de facto versus de jure concepts here. I cannot see that, as a matter of Constitutional law, the President is given the authority to do whatever he damn well pleases for his own personal reasons, regardless of whether or how badly it harms the country. That conflicts with the “faithfully execute” language. The only recourse for a breach of his obligations of office, however, is through impeachment. In other words, with a Republican-controlled Congress, the President may have the power in fact to de-classify any information in his unfettered discretion, but that does not mean he should get a political free pass for it. He still broke the law if the action was not in good faith performance of his official duties; there just does not happen to be any way to enforce it.

Consider the Walldon post below quoting Publius on the theory of the President as the “final arbiter” in so many areas related in any way to security.

In fact, I think the “final arbiter” assumption is itself a symptom of an even more fundamental and flawed assumption held by the administration. And that
assumption is the unyielding certitude of its own correctness and goodness. That
arrogance, to me, is original sin of the administration – and the source of its
most disturbing and often disastrous policies.

Even scarier than the adoption of these theories by this Administration is the apparent gullibility of the press in accepting such arguments at face value. These are positions that, without any question whatsoever, fatally undermine the essential checks-and-balances nature of the Constitution. Yes, you will find lawyers who dream up all kinds of sophisticated-sounding interpretations of this and that to try to turn it into a legitimate legal question. Folks, it ain’t. When the President claims to be the “final arbiter” of anything, you know it’s wrong.