Exhibit A of Trump’s
Recklessness
The classified documents recovered by federal agents at the
former President’s Mar-a-Lago estate add to the picture of his out-of-control
behavior after he lost the 2020 election.
By David Rohde
August 12, 2022
On Friday, a federal magistrate judge in Florida
ended at least some of the speculation about the search of Donald Trump’s
Mar-a-Lago estate by Justice Department officials and F.B.I. agents. Documents
unsealed by the judge showed that, during the raid earlier this week, agents had
discovered and removed four sets of top-secret documents and seven
other sets of classified documents from Trump’s home. One group of documents
was described as “classified TS/SCI documents,” an acronym for “top
secret/sensitive compartmented information”—one of the highest levels of
secrecy that exists in the U.S. government.
The search warrant
unsealed by the judge sought “all physical documents and records constituting
evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” in
violation of three criminal statutes, including the Espionage Act, which prohibits
“gathering, transmitting, or losing” information relating to the national
defense, and carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison. All three of the
potential offenses cited in the warrant are felony crimes. On Thursday,
the Washington Post reported that
some of the documents pertained to nuclear weapons, an account the former
President dismissed as a “hoax.” But the events of the past week raise the possibility
that officials have finally found misconduct by Trump for which he can be held
legally accountable.
A former Trump staffer
said on Friday that Trump had the power as President to declassify top-secret
information, and he could mount a defense in court that he did so before
removing the documents from the White House. But senior officials who have been
investigated, in the past, for improperly handling classified
information—including David Petraeus, a C.I.A director during the Obama
Administration, and Sandy Berger, a national-security adviser during the
Clinton Administration—eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges for
unlawfully removing secret documents.
The political
implications for Trump remain to be seen. Trump’s base, of course, will believe
that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. are falsely accusing him. But, for
everyone else, a sense of exhaustion with Trump’s antics feels inevitable. The
credit goes to an unlikely figure—Attorney General Merrick Garland. In an unexpected news
conference on Thursday, Garland announced that he was asking for the warrant to
be unsealed. It was a way of puncturing Trump’s bluster about the raid. Garland
also defended the men and women of the Justice Department and the F.B.I. “I
will not stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked,” he said.
Garland was measured in his tone. He was balanced and fair. He did not smear
Trump, nor did he publicly accuse him of any crimes. It remains unclear if
Trump will be prosecuted. But Garland stood up for the rule of law and also
respected the rule of law.
In the days ahead,
Trump—as he has done so effectively in the past—will deflect and dissemble. One
of his initial defenses on Friday was to falsely claim in social-media posts that President Barack
Obama had taken tens of millions of government documents after leaving office:
“What are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many of
which are classified, that President Obama took to Chicago?” A statement from
the National Archives and Records Administration refuted Trump’s assertion. The
archives said that roughly thirty million pages of unclassified records from
Obama’s eight years in office were transferred to a National Archives facility
in the Chicago area and that they continue to be maintained by the agency.
“Former President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the
Presidential records of his Administration,” the agency said.
The exposure of Trump’s
lies is not new. During his four years in office, Trump was regularly shown to
make false claims, exaggerate achievements, and smear enemies. But he was also
careful to avoid crossing certain legal thresholds and to generally obey the
advice of his lawyers. The Mueller report, for example, revealed that Trump was
saved from patently obvious obstruction of justice when top aides—particularly
White House counsel Don McGahn—declined to carry out his orders or managed to
restrain him. When Trump withheld four hundred million dollars in aid from
Ukraine as leverage to demand an investigation of his likely Democratic
opponent, he kept his language vague in phone calls with President Volodymyr Zelensky, which helped him deny wrongdoing.
The classified documents
collected by the F.B.I. agents at Mar-a-Lago, as well as the work of the January 6th committee, show that Trump was
increasingly reckless at the end of his Presidency. Former Trump Administration
officials have testified that the President’s behavior changed after he lost
the election to Joe Biden in November, 2020. Warnings from White House lawyers
that had previously reined Trump in were no longer effective. Whatever
guardrails remained were cast aside.
For Americans who wish
to look, their worst fears about Donald Trump are being confirmed. He
recklessly handled some of the country’s most important secrets, including,
apparently, information related to nuclear weapons. Tens of millions of
Americans, undoubtedly, will continue to believe his conspiracy theories. But
the steady compilation of facts by the January 6th committee, the Justice
Department, and the F.B.I. is creating a post-November, 2020, record of
negligence that exceeds Trump’s actions earlier in his tenure. The Mar-a-Lago
search warrant showed that Trump has grown more rash, thoughtless, and
heedless—and more unfit than ever for the Presidency. ♦