Trump Classified Documents Detailed U.S. “Vulnerabilities” to Military Attack

Donald Trump allegedly kept hundreds of classified documents, including on how best to attack the United States, from seven different government agencies, the indictment against him reveals.

Trump is now the first former president ever to be federally charged. Of the 37 total charges against him, which were unsealed Friday, 31 are for willful retention of national defense information. He is accused of keeping an array of classified national security material after leaving the White House, despite being unauthorized to do so.

The documents had come from the CIA, the Defense Department, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Department of Energy, and the State Department and its Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

And a look at what was in the classified documents is quite damning.

The materials Trump kept included information on “potential vulnerabilities” to military attack for the United States and its allies, as well as details on the U.S. nuclear program. “The unauthorized disclosure of these classified documents could put at risk the national security of the United States, foreign relations, the safety of the United States military, and human sources and the continued viability of sensitive intelligence collection methods,” the indictment said.

The documents also contained plans for possible retaliatory attacks on foreign nations. One such document detailed a plan to attack Iran. Prosecutors obtained recordings of Trump admitting he had the document and that he knew he couldn’t declassify it because he was no longer president. That document has not yet been recovered.

Donald Trump was so loose with secret government documents, he was showing them to someone from his super PAC and hiding them in his shower.

After being impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable for sexual abuse and defamation, the former president has now received 37 criminal counts for mishandling classified government documents.

The indictment, released Friday, lays out wild details about how Trump handled the documents, even being “personally involved” in packing up the boxes full of the classified information as he left the White House.

After transporting the classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, Trump apparently hid the boxes in a Mar-a-Lago ballroom, bathroom and shower, an office, his bedroom, and a storage room.

At the Bedminster Club in New Jersey, in August or September 2021, Trump allegedly showed a representative of his PAC—who did not have security clearance—“a classified map related to a military operation and told the representative that he should not be showing it to the representative and that the representative should not get too close.”

All told, Trump allegedly retained classified documents from seven agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Defense, National Security Agency, and State Department.

Also at the Bedminster club, Trump showed a writer, a publisher, and two members of his staff—none with security clearance—a “plan of attack” that was apparently prepared for him by the DOD and a senior military official. He called it “highly confidential” and “secret,” adding, “As president I could have declassified it,” and, “Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.” Previous reporting indicates this may have been a Pentagon document on a plan to attack Iran.

In the August Mar-a-Lago FBI search alone, out of the 102 documents recovered, 17 were classified as “Top Secret,” 54 were “Secret,” and 31 were “Confidential.”

Before said raid, and after Trump was issued a subpoena in May, one of Trump’s attorneys had recounted that Trump apparently said, “I don’t want anybody looking, I don’t want anybody looking through my boxes, I really don’t,” and “Well what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” and even “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”

Note, again, while others, including Joe Biden and Mike Pence, have been found to have possessed classified documents from previous administrations, each have complied with inquiries and in returning documents expeditiously, something Trump demonstrably did not do and has actively obstructed.

Donald Trump received 37 criminal counts in the special counsel’s investigation into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.

Trump became the first former president ever to be federally indicted late Thursday. He was also previously impeached twice, criminally indicted, and found liable of sexual abuse and defamation. He is still under investigation for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Trump has unilaterally rejected every accusation leveled against him, including in the special counsel investigation—and before it was even announced what those charges would be.

The charges were unsealed Friday afternoon. Trump was charged with 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, for keeping classified documents related to national security despite being unauthorized to do so. He was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, for claiming he had returned all the documents.

Trump and his body man, Walt Nauta, were both charged with one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice for moving boxes of classified documents and hiding them from Trump’s legal team. They were charged with one count of withholding a document or record, one count of corruptly concealing a document or record, one count of concealing a document in a federal investigation, and one count of a scheme to conceal.

Nauta was also charged with one count of making false statements and representations, separate from the claims Trump made. Nauta had helped move boxes of classified material from a storage room. He told investigators he did not know what was in the boxes or how they had gotten there in the first place.

Read through the 49-page indictment here.

They say that misery loves company, and Donald Trump is no longer alone in being indicted for allegedly mishandling classified documents. And he may get more company soon.

Trump and his body man Walt Nauta have both been charged in the investigation into the former president’s handling of classified material. Nauta’s charging caught many people off guard, as special counsel Jack Smith, who leads the investigation, has played his cards close to his chest.

But it shows that Smith’s investigation is more far-reaching than initially expected.

As now twice-indicted former President Donald Trump confronts yet another legal battle, he is shaking up his legal team for the umpteenth time.

Trump announced on Truth Social Friday that he is calling up Todd Blanche “and a firm to be named later” to represent him as he faces charges for mishandling and refusing to return classified government information after leaving the White House.

With the call-up, the twice-impeached and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president is saying bye-bye to lawyers Jim Trusty and John Rowley. The departure was unexpected, as Trusty had been on CNN just hours earlier going to bat to defend Trump.

Blanche is an elite white-collar criminal defense lawyer and former federal prosecutor. Previously, he has represented former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort and Igor Fruman, a former Rudy Giuliani associate who allegedly helped scour Ukraine for damaging information on Trump’s rivals. Fruman was sentenced to a one-year prison term for a campaign finance violation.

Manafort was able to evade mortgage fraud and other charges with the help of Blanche—charges Blanche had called “politically motivated,” just as Trump’s team calls the ones he faces now.

For their part, Trusty and Rowley claim to be resigning because it is “a logical moment” to step aside since the case has been filed in Miami. It is unclear why exactly it’s a “logical moment” for someone’s two defense lawyers to “resign” just because it’s in Miami (unless they personally felt victimized by Ron DeSantis’s war on civil rights or something).

Perhaps Trump fired them to shake up his legal defenses, given how poor his track record in the courts has been up to this point. But Trump recruited Blanche before his Manhattan arraignment too, and well, we saw how that went. Perhaps the lawyers did leave of their own volition, but to jump from a sinking ship. Either way, the shake-up doesn’t necessarily bode strongly for the serial criminal.