Several witnesses told Jack Smith's team that they routinely saw classified documents in Trump's White House residence, and that Trump would sometimes store as many as 30 boxes in his bedroom, which one valet said Trump treated "like a junk drawer." https://t.co/f0TNq2SVV5 — Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) April 27, 2024 Nothing in this article is …
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The book also noted that Trump was “unique” among presidents in that, before taking over the White House, “he had no experience handling classified information or working with military, diplomatic, or intelligence programs and operations.”…
As he has done in public, Trump often privately disagreed with conclusions reached by the U.S. intelligence community, especially related to Russia and Ukraine, choosing instead to rely on unverified claims from other people, sources said that Smith’s investigators were told.
And sources said former aides confirmed to Smith’s investigators previous media reports that Trump almost never read the President’s Daily Brief, a report summarizing classified intelligence and analysis on the day’s most pressing issues.
Trump preferred to receive such summaries verbally, according to sources…
As some former officials described it to Smith’s investigators, discussing the latest intelligence with Trump could be an unpredictable task, sources said.
At times he would become so upset over what senior national security or intelligence officials were telling him that it would derail entire meetings, according to sources familiar with what witnesses told investigators.
In one series of meetings, ahead of an international summit in Europe, Trump met with then-CIA director Gina Haspel, then-Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and others to help plan for the summit. But when Trump was told positive things about one of the people he would likely meet at the summit, Trump “lost it,” insisting that he didn’t care, then he “lost it” again when he was being updated on a tax-related negotiation involving Mnuchin, sources said.
The sources said Trump then pitted one of his top aides against Mnuchin in front of everyone else, escalating the tension so much that it reminded one of those present of the movie “The Hunger Games,” with its dystopian death match broadcast live on national TV…
Sources said that, as one former official described it to Smith’s team, Trump’s posting of the image from Iran’s failed rocket launch revealed how the then-president “just didn’t care” about protecting classified information.
In 2021, Yahoo! News described how, during his briefing with intelligence officials, Trump thought the image “was very neat, and asked if he could keep it,” which made some of the intelligence officials nervous, according to an administration official. But that news report didn’t offer the same detailed account provided to Smith by witnesses last year.
Sources told ABC News that while speaking with Smith’s team, former aides and officials said Trump was specifically warned at the time that while he had the authority to declassify the image of Iran’s botched launch, there were also potential risks associated with doing that.
Trump initially agreed to wait while intelligence officials were then consulted, sources said, but the intelligence officials apparently took too long; about an hour later, Trump posted the image online.
“I was so appalled,” one former national security official told Smith’s team, according to the sources.
The former official noted that Trump may have believed it wasn’t a big deal — but only an expert would know if releasing such classified information could reveal “how we got it” it and whether it could “compromise our ability to get [it] in the future,” the former official explained to Smith’s team, according to the sources.