signalmankenneth
Verified User
If I was the intel/military community, I would take it for grant Trump has compromise our national security with the theft of those classified documents?!! I don't want Trump to be anywhere near our national secrets ever again?!!
The 37-count indictment of former President Donald Trump on federal charges of willfully retaining documents containing national defense information, refusing to return them, and obstructing related investigations, is a watershed moment. The implications are grave not just for the former president – they also serve as a litmus test for the rule of law and the democratic institutions charged with upholding it.
The fact of this indictment is an important testament to the principle that no person, not even a former president, is above the law in a democracy; likewise, the process that follows will be a test of the constitutional requirement that all defendants, including Trump, are entitled to the law’s evenhanded application.
As if that were not enough, even more is at stake in this case. Because of the remarkably sensitive nature of the documents the former president retained, and the shockingly insecure locations where they were held and transported (“in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room”), there are also potentially grave implications for U.S. national security. It is those national security implications, as evidenced in particular by the 31 counts lodged under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)), which we briefly lay out here.
“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and to plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
It is also important to pay attention to the classification markings on the documents at issue in the 31 Espionage Act counts. These markings reflect not just the level of sensitivity of the information, but are often used to indicate how the government knows the information contained in the document.
Some of the documents listed in these counts bore markings indicating that the information was derived from human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and sensitive imagery collection, while other information was collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). That means their compromise could risk not just exposing the information in the U.S. government’s possession, but the sometimes extremely sensitive sources and methods used to collect it.
Of particular concern is that, in addition to Top Secret information (which means its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be “expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security”), the documents likely contained what is known as codeword material, the highest level of classification in the U.S. government and restricted to a small list of named individuals with a “need to know.” As the indictment explains:
https://www.justsecurity.org/86887/...ons-of-trumps-indictment-a-damage-assessment/
The 37-count indictment of former President Donald Trump on federal charges of willfully retaining documents containing national defense information, refusing to return them, and obstructing related investigations, is a watershed moment. The implications are grave not just for the former president – they also serve as a litmus test for the rule of law and the democratic institutions charged with upholding it.
The fact of this indictment is an important testament to the principle that no person, not even a former president, is above the law in a democracy; likewise, the process that follows will be a test of the constitutional requirement that all defendants, including Trump, are entitled to the law’s evenhanded application.
As if that were not enough, even more is at stake in this case. Because of the remarkably sensitive nature of the documents the former president retained, and the shockingly insecure locations where they were held and transported (“in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom, and a storage room”), there are also potentially grave implications for U.S. national security. It is those national security implications, as evidenced in particular by the 31 counts lodged under the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. § 793(e)), which we briefly lay out here.
“The classified documents Trump stored in his boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and to plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
It is also important to pay attention to the classification markings on the documents at issue in the 31 Espionage Act counts. These markings reflect not just the level of sensitivity of the information, but are often used to indicate how the government knows the information contained in the document.
Some of the documents listed in these counts bore markings indicating that the information was derived from human intelligence (HUMINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), and sensitive imagery collection, while other information was collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). That means their compromise could risk not just exposing the information in the U.S. government’s possession, but the sometimes extremely sensitive sources and methods used to collect it.
Of particular concern is that, in addition to Top Secret information (which means its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be “expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security”), the documents likely contained what is known as codeword material, the highest level of classification in the U.S. government and restricted to a small list of named individuals with a “need to know.” As the indictment explains:
https://www.justsecurity.org/86887/...ons-of-trumps-indictment-a-damage-assessment/