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 new, but it’s a damning narrative about someone who should never have been given the chance to sell out his country… and who should absolutely not get the chance to do it again. It deserves wider circulation. From ABC News, “‘So appalled’: What witnesses told special counsel about Trump’s handling of classified info while still president”:
In the summer of 2019, only hours after an Iranian rocket accidentally exploded at one of Iran’s own launch sites, senior U.S. officials met with then-President Donald Trump and shared a sharply detailed, highly classified image of the blast’s catastrophic aftermath.
The image was captured by a U.S. satellite whose true capabilities were a tightly guarded secret. But Trump wanted to share it with the world — he thought it was especially “sexy” because it was marked classified, one of his former advisers later recalled to special counsel Jack Smith’s investigators, according to sources familiar with the former adviser’s statements.
Worried that the image becoming public could hurt national security efforts, intelligence officials urged Trump to hold off until more knowledgeable experts were able to weigh in, the sources said. But less than an hour later, while at least one of those intelligence officials was in another building scrambling to get more information, Trump posted the image to Twitter…
The public pushback to Trump’s post was immediate: Intelligence experts and even international media questioned whether U.S. interests had just been endangered by what Trump did. When pressed about it at the White House, Trump insisted he hadn’t released classified information because he had an “absolute right to do” it.
While much of Smith’s sprawling classified documents investigation has focused on how Trump handled classified materials after leaving the White House, a wide array of former aides and advisers — including personal valets, press assistants, senior national security officials, and even Trump’s briefers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — have provided Smith with firsthand accounts about how Trump allegedly handled and used intelligence while still in office…
In interviews with investigators last year, former aides and national security officials who were close to Trump in the White House described a president who could erupt in anger when presented with intelligence he didn’t want to hear, who routinely reviewed and stored classified information in unsecured locations, and who had what some former officials described as “a cavalier attitude” toward the damage that could be done by its disclosure, according to sources.
A book published on the CIA’s website, describing the intelligence community’s experience with Trump during his transition to the presidency and then his time in the White House, said that while Trump was “suspicious and insecure about the intelligence process,” he still “engaged with it,” even as he publicly attacked it.
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