The recently unsealed indictment of former President Donald J. Trump reveals that his handling of classified documents was far more casual and his efforts to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve them more blatant than previously known. The indictment highlights Mr. Trump’s indifferent attitude towards sensitive information and his willfulness in getting his aides and lawyers to hinder government attempts to recover the records. The 49-page document presented evidence of government records being kept casually in a bathroom and on a ballroom stage at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump even made a “plucking motion” to suggest that his lawyer should go through a folder full of classified materials and “pluck out” anything that was detrimental.
The indictment is more than just a list of the seven crimes Mr. Trump has been accused of; it also showcases his personality, including his sense of bombast, vengeance, and his belief that everything he touches belongs to him. Mr. Trump even praised an unnamed aide to Hillary Clinton who helped destroy tens of thousands of emails from a private server, saying he did a great job because Ms. Clinton “didn’t get in any trouble.”
Moreover, the indictment gives the clearest picture yet of the highly sensitive records Mr. Trump took with him when leaving the White House. These covert documents included information about U.S. domestic nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities to an attack on the homeland, and plans for retaliatory strikes on foreign adversaries. The indictment emphasizes that leaking these classified documents could seriously jeopardize the national security of the United States, foreign relations, and the safety of the U.S. military.
The indictment also accuses Mr. Trump of showing or almost showing classified material to people who lacked security clearance. One of these incidents occurred when he displayed the map of a certain country to a representative of his political action committee, commenting that a military operation there “was not going well”. The indictment goes on to describe how Mr. Trump quickly realized that he should not have shown the map and told the representative to “not get too close.”
Another incident in July 2021 shows Mr. Trump brandishing a “plan of attack” against Iran to visitors at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. His aides were horrified, and he admitted that he could have declassified the “highly confidential” document when he was president, but it was now too late. Despite this, Mr. Trump almost seemed unable to control himself and said, “This is secret information. Look, look at this.”
