This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated June 16, 2023
News of Donald Trump’s federal indictment just over a week moved quickly. One day, reports surfaced that the special prosecutor would ask the grand jury empaneled for the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case to indict the former president. The following day, news broke that the grand jury had voted to indict Trump, and then one day after, the indictment was unsealed and made public.
The earliest reporting included some shocking details. The following day, Trump announced he had been indicted and more astounding details were reported. By the time the indictment was unsealed a day later, it not only confirmed those facts, but its 49 pages laid out an evidentiary trail, much of it from Donald Trump’s own words, that was gobsmacking.
The indictment states there are recordings in which Trump shares classified intel he had no authority to be in possession of with people who had no security clearance, while stating he is fully aware it is classified and he can no longer declassify it since he is not president. His original defense of his actions with respect to these documents was that he had declassified them all before leaving the White House, which he claimed he could do just be thinking it.
Besides that being ridiculous, evidence gathered by prosecutors appears to show Trump knew full well that was not the case and he was in possession of classified documents he was not allowed to possess. Furthermore, the indictment speaks to how sensitive these classified documents were. Trump kept documents that detailed our nation’s greatest vulnerabilities, how others could find success in attacking us, and how we could possibly retaliate militarily.
Less than three weeks after Biden was sworn in as president, in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Nora O’Donnell, Biden said he would not allow his predecessor to receive intel briefings. Given what we have learned this month, that decision was prescient. However, it may have been more than just a decision based on an on-point hunch. There had already been reports of Trump being careless with our nation’s greatest secrets.
In the early days of his presidency, Trump hosted Russian officials in the Oval Office and it was reported soon after that he revealed classified intel to them from one of our closest allies. Further reports throughout his four years in the White House stated that national intelligence officials were gravely concerned about classified intel that may be compromised by Trump.
We do not, nor may we ever, what classified intel may have made its way to those who seek to obtain it, thanks to Trump. And we may never know the full ramifications of any such breaches, but there has been talk about it for years.
The indictment details how Trump, from the time he left the White House in January 2021 to when the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago a yaear-and-a-half later after a judge granted a warrant to do so, allegedly moved classified documents in attempts to deceive federal agencies who he was supposed to be coordinating with to ensure any such documents were returned. It also details how he allegedly shared classified intel during that period. In October, 2021, the New York Times reported that an unusually high number of foreign citizens serving as U.S. informants had been killed, arrested or compromised by rival intelligence agencies.
The indictment includes photos of boxes of classified documents stored in various, unsecured locations within his Palm Beach golf resort. Stacked on a stage in a ballroom. Stacked in a gilded bathroom, around a toilet and beneath a chandelier. But most troubling was a photo that his valet, Walt Nauta, who has also been indicted, included in a text message to another Trump aide. A picture from a storage closet of classified documents from a toppled box strewn across the floor, including labeling indicating some were from our closest allies.
“They say I have the most loyal people. Did you ever see that? Where I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”
Donald Trump, January 23, 2016, at a campaign stop in Iowa during his first presidential campaign
It is utterly embarrassing and disappointing that this man ever became president. He has compromised our nation’s security, the lives of countless intelligence personnel, and all of our safety, but, as he said during his first campaign, he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and [he] wouldn’t lose any voters.” And he has supporters proving that is still very true for them, as they have decided that any attempt at accountability for anything Trump has done, no matter how egregious, is the real problem.
Here in Brooklyn, Councilman Ari Kagan and Council candidate Vito LaBella were quick to say when Trump was indicted in Manhattan this March, that it was purely a political prosecution. Some seem to respond to the axiom, ‘No one is above the law,’ by words that indicate they think, ‘No. One is above the law.’
Neither President Biden, nor the Democrats, indicted Trump. A grand jury, made up of Floridian citizens voted to do that based on the evidence they viewed, that they felt supported the 37 counts of violating the espionage act, lying the federal authorities, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy.
