1 year ago
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Having devoted a good bit of time to the legal ramifications of the indictment of Donald Trump, we’ll begin today with Tess Bridgeman and Briana Rosen of JustSecurity and their focus on the national security ramifications of Trump’s alleged retention and dissemination of classified documents.
Beyond compromising U.S. information, the security breach is significant because of its potentially damaging impact on intelligence liaison relationships and information sharing with other countries. If the documents contained information from joint collection streams, for example, it is possible that the former president has compromised allied governments’ sources and methods. As an example, some of the documents were marked “FVEY,”(or “Five Eyes”), indicating that they were shared with U.S. intelligence partners in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
The indictment details at least two instances of “TRUMP’s Disclosures of Classified Information in Private Meetings,” in unsecure locations, in which he knowingly shared classified information with people who did not have security clearances. Did he knowingly or unknowingly share any of this information with individuals who could have been agents of a foreign power, or with others who did so in turn? It is not inconceivable that foreign intelligence agencies – who would go to great lengths to access information of exactly this sort – could have gained access either to the documents themselves (were the boxes in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom, for example, left there during events?), by initiating a relationship with Mar-a-Lago staff who had access to the documents, or others in Trump’s orbit to whom he showed or described the documents.
Since these scenarios are plausible, the Intelligence Community may now be in the unfortunate position of having to assume the compromise of some of this information and needing to mitigate the potential fallout, which could entail dropping crucial programs or sources. (Indeed, the Intelligence Community may have needed to do so as soon as it was discovered that some of these documents were missing, which could explain a willingness to now use them in trial if certain intelligence streams are no longer active.) It is also possible that the Intelligence Community has not yet discovered all the missing classified documents, which poses a risk that some intelligence streams could be compromised without U.S. government knowledge (and be used to conduct denial and deception campaigns, for example).
I didn’t see this mini-thread in yesterday’s APR by BPARTR and exlrrp until late last night but I had the same question upon rereading the indictment: they charged for 31 classified documents when there were over 100 classified documents found. Where are the other documents? Are those other documents too top secret to be brought up in court? Are any of them still missing? Will they be featured in possible indictments in other venues?
(I did enjoy reading Matt Tait’s piece at Lawfare speculating on the provenance of the documents cited in the indictment although Mr. Tait’s piece may be a little too much speculative.)
