Only those who haven’t been watching can’t understand why he grabbed as many of our secrets as he could and stuffed them in his luggage. Only those who turn their backs on recent history can’t imagine the damage he might do.
Such is the sway Donald Trump holds over his followers, such is the strength of the Trumpian cult of personality that even once hardcore Republican hawks can’t find anything wrong with his taking secret documents to his insecure beach resort.
But for the rest of America, the Washington Post, on September 6, 2022, makes it crystal clear why the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained a search warrant allowing the FBI to take back the hundreds of classified documents Donald Trump had taken from the White House:
“A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month …
“Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.” (Emphasis added.)
The New York Times provided a summary of what the FBI retrieved: “The inventory listed seven batches of materials taken by the F.B.I. from Mr. Trump’s personal office at Mar-a-Lago that contained government-owned documents and photographs, some marked with classification levels up to ‘top secret’ and some that were not marked as classified. The list also included batches of government documents that had been in 26 boxes or containers in a storage room at the compound.
“In all, the list said, the F.B.I. retrieved 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked as secret, 31 marked as confidential, and 11,179 government documents or photographs without classification markings.”
In the interest of fairness, here are some of the excuses the Trump Club offered. Jared Kushner claimed: “This seems like it’s an issue of paperwork that should’ve been able to be worked out between DOJ and [Trump]. I don’t know what he took or what he didn’t take, but I think right now that we’re relying on leaks to the media.” (Emphasis added.)
According to Yahoo News, Trump posted on his Truth Social, “This Mar-a-Lago Break-in Search, And Seizure was illegal and unconstitutional, and we are taking all actions necessary to get the documents back, which we would have given to them without the necessity of the despicable raid of my home, so that I can give them to the National Archives until they are required for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library and Museum.” (Emphasis added.)
Trump attorney James Trusty told Judge Cannon that this is a “criminalized investigation” of a dispute with the National Archives and Records Administration, and that these records are like an “overdue library book” that has been made into a criminal matter. NBC News reported another Trump attorney, Chris Kise, said there was nothing nefarious about a former president holding records from his tenure. Rather, he said, the mix of material found at Mar-a-Lago “is what you would expect if you looked through a bunch of boxes that were moved in a hurry from a residence or an office. It contains all sorts of things.” (Emphasis added.)
Here’s an excerpt from the legal argument the Trump team made for a Special Master to be appointed to examine all the material that was seized:
Alleged discovery? How about looking at the picture. The only reason “this discovery” was to be anticipated was witness testimony and the fact that the DOJ and F.B.I. were shocked by what they retrieved the first time. And there is a great difference between “Presidential records,” which still belong to the National Archives, and these documents central to the national defense. The truth is that none of this material should ever have been removed from safe and secure storage in Washington D.C. These documents never belonged to the President.
Let me emphasize: all the lame excuses and embarrassing lies seem so very pathetic when we see how irresponsible Trump’s actions were. The Washington Post explains:
“Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location. But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House …
“After months of trying, according to government court filings, the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8.
“It was in this last batch of government secrets, the people familiar with the matter said, that the information about a foreign government’s nuclear-defense readiness was found.” (Emphasis added.)
I must admit I’ve been puzzled watching one TV pundit after another look straight into the camera and wonder aloud: “But why would he take all those top secret and super-secret documents with him to Mar-a-Lago. What would he want with them?”
It’s as if recent history has been wiped from their memory banks. Time and again we’ve witnessed Trump’s willingness to share sensitive data with all kinds of inappropriate people. How about Russia and Putin? Have we forgotten Trump’s early life and the crucial role former Joseph McCarthy chief counsel Roy Cohn played, not only as a mentor but as his lawyer? Cohn was a prosecutor for several questionable trials, including the Smith Act convictions of members of the Communist Party and in the Rosenberg spy case. David Greenglass, the prosecution’s star witness, questioned by Cohn, later claimed he had been pressured by the prosecution to lie about giving secret documents to Julius Rosenberg and did so to protect his family. Later in life, Cohn represented clients as diverse as Donald Trump, former owner of the Yankees George Steinbrenner, FOX News owner Rupert Murdoch, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, and a number of Mafia kingpins.
The Department of Justice indicted Trump in 1973 for racial discrimination: Trump had been quoting different rental costs for his apartments to African Americans than for whites—a violation of the Fair Housing Act. Roy Cohn countersued for 100 million dollars, asserting their action was irresponsible and baseless. Trump settled several years later. Then, Cohn’s connection to the mob helped Trump find concrete for Trump Tower in the midst of a Teamster’s strike.
As Wikipedia puts it, “Throughout Cohn’s career there were accusations of theft, obstruction, extortion, tax evasion, bribery, blackmail, fraud, perjury, and witness tampering … His combative personality would often come out in the threatening letters he would send to those who dared to sue his clients.”
According to Wikipedia, both Cohn and Joseph McCarthy “targeted government officials and cultural figures not only for suspected Communist sympathies, but also for alleged homosexuality … McCarthy and Cohn were responsible for the firing of scores of gay men from government employment, and strong-armed many opponents into silence using rumors of their homosexuality.”
While you can certainly use information for good (learning, for example, to better understand how viruses work and how to counter them), men like J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Roy Cohn discovered early on that, if you crave power, you can just as easily use information to bully, blackmail, and control.
As tyrants quickly learn, you can literally control what news, what books and newspapers the people (e.g. North Koreans) are able to access. Control how votes are totaled, and who does the counting. They always seem to win. In the days before the internet, Hitler used the February 1933 Reichstag Fire to blame and arrest Communist members of the German Parliament, thereby giving his Nazi Party majority control. Today, Putin arrests anyone who dares to run against him.
These days, those wanting to control decision-making and popular opinion have a sophisticated array of software tools and social media platforms to direct people’s attention, inflame their biases, and deceive more convincingly than ever.
With whom might Donald Trump have shared, or hoped to share, some of this top-secret info? Saudi Arabia, possibly? Turkey? Have people so easily forgotten the work of Special Counsel Mueller whose investigation revealed multiple connections between the Trump team and Putin’s Russia?
As PBS reports, “It was one of the more tantalizing, yet unresolved, questions of the investigation into possible connections between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign: Why was a business associate of campaign chairman Paul Manafort given internal polling data—and what did he do with it?
“A Treasury Department statement Thursday offered a potentially significant clue, asserting that Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant, had shared sensitive campaign and polling information with Russian intelligence services. Kilimnik has long been alleged by U.S. officials to have ties to Russian intelligence. But the statement in a broader Treasury Department sanctions announcement was the first time the U.S. government had so directly drawn a connection from the Trump campaign to the Kremlin’s intelligence services.
“The issue resurfaced Thursday because Kilimnik was one of 32 people and entities sanctioned by the U.S. government for interference in the 2020 election. Officials say Kilimnik sought to promote the bogus narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election. Kilimnik was a key but mysterious figure in Mueller’s investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign. A business associate of Manafort’s who worked closely with him, even managing his firm’s office in Kyiv, Kilimnik is mentioned by name 156 times in the Mueller report. He was also indicted alongside Manafort on witness tampering allegations, but has not appeared in the U.S. to face those charges. The FBI has issued a $250,000 award for information leading to his arrest.
“Manafort and Kilimnik and ultimately Vladimir Putin connect several strands of our story. Manafort committed bank fraud for not honestly declaring the more than 60 million dollars he made working for the incredibly corrupt former Russian-backed President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. Manafort, among other things, tutored Yanukovych on the political ways of the West: how to look and sound like he wasn’t actually a brutish, greedy dictator. When finally overthrown after violently suppressing public dissent, and after fleeing to Russia to avoid prosecution, it was discovered that Yanukovych had stolen as much as 37 billion dollars from the people. “Ukrainian citizens who stormed his Mezhyhirya mansion discovered a palace of cartoonish opulence with gilded bathrooms, a private zoo, and a floating restaurant in the shape of a pirate ship. A good illustration of this extravagance is the $11million he allegedly paid for a chandelier and his seven tablecloths worth a staggering $13,000.”
It’s no wonder the Ukrainians turned to Zelensky. But that’s another chapter. Now back to the critical importance of the polling data Manafort turned over to the Russians. This info sharing was a two way street. All the poll data Manafort gave Kilimnik presumably went to Russian security agencies who used it in their extensive digital campaign to better target Americans in swing districts.
Sadly, most Americans never read Mueller’s indictment of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) and Putin’s close associate Yengeniy Prigozhin. First, it’s important to stress that U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. But that’s exactly what Putin and Russia did to help elect Donald Trump. Those working at the IRA in St. Petersburg pretended to be ordinary Americans, masking their location and identity, while posting and commenting on political issues on Facebook, for example—often stirring up controversy and provoking arguments:
Add the work of the Russian hackers to the services provided by Cambridge Analytica for the Trump campaign and you have a multi-faceted digital offensive. The New York Times helps us to understand how Cambridge Analytica’s data was employed in the service of electing Donald Trump: “The firm had secured a $15 million investment from Robert Mercer, the wealthy Republican donor, and wooed his political adviser, Stephen K. Bannon, with the promise of tools that could identify the personalities of American voters and influence their behavior. But it did not have the data to make its new products work.
“So the firm harvested private information from the Facebook profiles of more than 50 million users without their permission, according to former Cambridge employees, associates and documents, making it one of the largest data leaks in the social network’s history. The breach allowed the company to exploit the private social media activity of a huge swath of the American electorate, developing techniques that underpinned its work on President Trump’s campaign in 2016.”
Wired Magazine tells more of the story, adding a whole other wrinkle: “News that Cambridge Analytica’s CEO sought Wikileaks’ help on Clinton emails amplifies questions about firm’s role in Trump campaign …
“Ever since it burst onto the scene of American politics in 2015, Cambridge has trumpeted its massive data trove, boasting 5,000 data points on every American. Cambridge claims to have built extensive personality profiles on every American, which it uses for so-called “psychographic targeting,” based on people’s personality types …
“The Cambridge staff helped the campaign identify which voters in the RNC’s data file were most likely to be persuadable, meaning they were undecided but looked likely to swing toward Trump. They also created lists of voters who were most likely to become donors. In August 2016, a Trump aide told me Cambridge was critical to helping the campaign raise $80 million in the prior month, after a primary race that had been largely self-funded by Trump. This was the only period during which Oczkowski’s staff relied on Cambridge’s data, because the RNC was just beginning to share its data with the Trump team.
“Cambridge went on to conduct hundreds of thousands of voter surveys for the Trump campaign to better understand the likely Trump voter … The company itself is an offshoot of the British firm, SCL [Strategic Communication Laboratories.], which has roots in government and military operations.
“Now, Assange’s confirmation that Cambridge’s CEO wanted to join forces against Clinton has renewed suspicions about the company’s business tactics, suspicions that the Trump team would very much like to avoid in the face of ongoing investigations into Russian meddling in the election.”
Now this might seem like a detour, but give me a minute. Christopher Wylie, whose book “Mindf*ck” told the Cambridge Analytica story from the inside out, was hired by Strategic Communication Laboratories. The company was led by Nigel Oakes and Alexander Nix, “a British military contractor, working on big ideas, with a growing team of mostly gay and mostly liberal data scientists … breaking into a new field of researching societies. If we could put society into a computer, we could start to quantify everything and encapsulate problems like poverty and ethnic violence in a computer; we could simulate how to fix them … I did not yet see the contradiction in what I was doing.”
His/their work in Trinidad offers some idea of the transformative power of information, especially information known only to the few: “The Trinidad Ministry of National Security wanted to know whether it was possible to use data to identify Trinidadians who were more likely to commit crimes—and, beyond that, whether it was possible to predict when and how they might do it … But the truth was, the Trinidadian government wasn’t interested only in reducing crime. They knew that if we built a tool to forecast behavior, they could use it in elections …
“Trinidad government contacts were offering SCL access to the unredacted, de-anonymized census …. Essentially the Trinidadian government was violating the privacy of all its citizens in one swoop …”
Next SCL wanted to combine raw census data with information about what the citizens of Trinidad were doing, thinking “using the Internet to collect relevant data … Working with a set of contractors, SCL was able to tap into the telecom firehose, pick an IP address, and then sit and watch what a person in Trinidad was browsing on the Internet at that very moment.
“We were spying, pure and simple, with cover from Trinidadian leaders. It felt bizarre—unreal—to be observing what people were watching on a tiny, faraway island, somehow more like we were playing a video game than intruding on the private lives of actual people. Even today, thinking back on it, Trinidad seems more like a dream than something we actually did. But we did do it … The Trinidad project was my first taste of this new wave of digital colonialism. We arrived unannounced with our superior technology and moral disregard, no better than the king’s armies. Except this time, unlike the conquerors of old, we were completely invisible.” (Emphasis added.)
Here’s Mother Jones’ take: “Perhaps inspired by Bannon, whom Wylie described to the Washington Post as ‘Nix’s boss,’ the company began testing messages designed to tap into immigration fears, anti-government sentiment, and an affinity for strongmen—’build the wall,’ ‘drain the swamp,’ ‘race realism’ (a euphemism for rolling back civil rights protections). It also surveyed opinions about Russian President Vladimir Putin. It seemed as if they were getting ready for a presidential campaign—but which one?”
And so we have information, we have early lessons from Roy Cohn and more recent lessons from the IRA and Paul Manafort, and, unfortunately, we have examples of how without any hesitation or moral qualms Donald Trump would share some of that classified information.
How about we start with Russian Prime Minister Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington and their visit to the White House. For those who don’t remember, this is how Reuters put it on May 15, 2017, “Trump revealed intelligence secrets to Russians in Oval Office: officials.”
Jeff Mason and Patricia Zengerle wrote: “U.S. President Donald Trump disclosed highly classified information to the Russian foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation during their meeting last week, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the situation said on Monday. The intelligence, both officials said, was supplied by a U.S. ally in the fight against the militant group. The White House said the allegations were false. ‘The president only discussed the common threats that both countries faced,’ deputy national security adviser Dina Powell said. Reacting to the news, first reported by the Washington Post, the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, Dick Durbin, called Trump’s conduct ‘dangerous and reckless.’ The Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, called the allegations ‘very, very troubling’ if true. One of the officials said the intelligence was classified Top Secret and also held in a secure ‘compartment’ to which only a handful of intelligence officials have access.” (Emphasis added.)
How and why had this happened? Well, Reuters suggests, “During his Oval Office meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak, Trump went off-script and began describing details about an Islamic State threat related to the use of laptop computers on aircraft, the officials told the Post. In his conversations with the Russian officials, Trump appeared to be boasting about his knowledge of the looming threats, telling them he was briefed on ‘great intel every day,’ an official with knowledge of the exchange said, according to the Post.”
The Washington Post added these details: “The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
“The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump’s meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.
“’This is code-word information,’ said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
While Secretary of State Rex Tillerson denied that the President had disclosed the source of the intelligence, Donald Trump defended his right to disclose the information to the Russians: Donald Trump has defended sharing classified information with Russian officials, saying he had the “absolute right” to do so for “humanitarian reasons” and because he wants Russia to step up its fight against Isil …
Another episode. According to a May 24, 2017 story by Reuters, “U.S. President Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart that Washington has sent two nuclear submarines to waters off the Korean peninsula, the New York Times said, comments likely to raise questions about his handling of sensitive information.”
Then there was the time the President or someone in his administration disclosed without permission news he had learned from British intelligence about the possible identity of the Manchester bombing. The UK Telegraph reported, “Pictures leaked ‘after being shared with US intelligence’ show bomb used in Manchester attack … The crime scene photographs were leaked to the New York Times after being shared with US intelligence, prompting a furious response among ministers. Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, had publicly asked US law enforcement agencies to stop leaking shared intelligence and said she had been ‘very clear with our friends that that should not happen again.’
“She said the leaks had been compromising the fast-moving investigation into what police have described as a ‘network’ behind Abedi, but her warning was ignored as the extraordinary series of pictures were leaked in the US, prompting a major diplomatic row.”
Wikipedia has offered some additional examples: “Trump’s erratic behavior led to mistrust from the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, who were also alarmed by Trump’s mixing with guests during his frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago, viewing the practice as ‘ripe to be exploited by a foreign spy service eager for access to the epicenter of American power.’ … In 2017, after North Korea conducted a ballistic-missile test, at least one Mar-a-Lago patron posted photos on social media of Trump talking on his cell phone and conferring with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the resort’s dining room. In 2019, authorities arrested a Chinese national carrying phones and other electronic devices who had left a reception area at the club; the incident heightened security concerns regarding the club.”
Lastly I want to raise the issue of Trump’s tendency to revert to threat, even blackmail, to get what he wants. Most prominent is his exchange with the new President of Ukraine, Volodoymyr Zelensky, who Trump knew was desperate to receive increased military aid from the U.S. to counter Russian aggression. The Yanukovych years, the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and continuing threats made such aid vital. During their phone call, Trump first made it clear he thought Ukraine ought to be indebted to the United States
The President: “I will say that we do a lot for Ukraine. We spend a lot of effort and a lot of time. Much more than the European countries are doing and they should be helping you more than they are. Germany does almost nothing for you. All they do is talk and I think it’s something that you should really ask them about. When I was speaking to Angela Merkel she talks Ukraine, but she ·doesn’t do anything. A lot of the European countries are the same way so I think it’s something you want to look at but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine. I wouldn’t say that it’s reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine.” (Emphasis added.)
Zelensky made a great effort to express his gratitude, even agreeing that other nations hadn’t done as much as the U.S., then emphasized Ukraine’s need for Javelin missiles: “It turns out that even though logically, the European Union should be our biggest partner but technically the United States is a much bigger partner than the European Union and I’m very grateful to you for that because the United States is doing quite a lot for Ukraine. Much more than the European Union especially when we are talking about sanctions against the Russian Federation. I would also like to thank you for your great support in the area of defense. We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.” (Emphasis added.)
Then President Trump re-emphasized the incorrect claims that it was Ukraine and not Russia that was interfering in U.S. politics, combining the false notion that there was some sort of conspiracy to keep a Ukrainian prosecutor from investigating Hunter Biden, along with claims that the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s and of Hillary Clinton’s email, and in fact the now famous server itself might be in Ukraine. The AP explains: “In broad outline, the theory contends—without evidence, of course—that the DNC hack was a setup based on fabricated computer records and designed to cast blame on Russia. One key figure in this supposed conspiracy: CrowdStrike, a security firm hired by the DNC that detected, stopped and analyzed the hack five months before the 2016 election.”
The President: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine, they say Crowdstrike. I guess you have one of your wealthy people. The server, they say Ukraine has it. There are a lot of things that went on, the whole situation. I think you’re surrounding yourself with some of the same people. I would like to have the Attorney General call you or your people and I would like you to get to the bottom of it. As you saw yesterday, that whole nonsense ended with a very poor performance by a man named Robert Mueller, an incompetent performance, but they say a lot of it started with Ukraine. Whatever you can do, it’s very important that you do it if that’s possible.”
Zelensky does his very best to re-assure the President without accepting his analysis: “I will personally tell you that one of my assistants spoke with Mr. Giuliani just recently and we are hoping very much that Mr. Giuliani will be able to travel to Ukraine and we will meet once he comes to Ukraine … We are great friends and you Mr. President have friends in our country so we can continue our strategic partnership. I also plan to surround myself with great people and in addition to that investigation, I guarantee as the President of Ukraine that all the investigations will be done openly and candidly. That I can assure you.”
And finally, the ultimate quid pro quo, because for President Trump it’s all about the Bidens, Hunter Biden and Joe Biden, Democratic candidate for the Presidency:
President Trump’s interaction with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s is so very revelatory. President Trump reveals he has little concern for the people of Ukraine and their pressing need for weapons to defend themselves from Russian aggression. He desperately wants to use their current predicament, their obvious vulnerability, to extract from Zelensky that he will publicly and vigorously investigate or—better yet—prosecute Biden’s son Hunter.
Everything I’ve discussed thus far was known to our intelligence services. They had witnessed President Trump’s disregard for safeguarding vulnerable secrets. They had listened to him in Helsinki tell Putin and the entire world, that he trusted the Russian dictator more than he trusted his own intelligence services.
Several years ago, the voters endowed a former TV host with the power to rule the land. A long-time bully, few voters truly knew his greatest love was the procurement of the deepest, darkest secrets, using anything he imagined as a vulnerability against perceived enemies and former friends alike.
Only those who haven’t been watching can’t understand why he grabbed as many of our secrets as he could and stuffed them in his luggage. Only those who turn their backs on recent history can’t imagine the damage he might do.
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