… that we know of
Among many striking things about the July 2021 audio of Donald Trump seeming to discuss a classified document with guests is how casual it all was. In real time, the now-indicted former president seems to recognize that what he’s doing is not kosher, requesting that it be off the record and drawing an aide to comment with an apparently uneasy laugh, “Yeah, now we have a problem.”
It’s as if those involved were familiar with the dance of Trump being cavalier with sensitive information. Which, even before this latest entry, is indeed what his full record demonstrates.
Appearing on MSNBC over the weekend, former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said she personally witnessed the way Trump shared information at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency.
Asked whether it was plausible that Trump was actually showing off classified documents in July 2021 — Trump has suggested it was mere “bravado” — Grisham said: “The short answer is yes. I watched him show documents to people at Mar-a-Lago on the dining room patio. So he has no respect for classified information. Never did.”
Grisham’s account is not a detailed one. But it comports with plenty of history. With the indictment accusing him of sharing classified documents with unauthorized people on two separate occasions in 2021, it’s worth running through what we know about the other major episodes in re: Trump and sensitive information.
(A note: While president, Trump had broad authority to declassify information at will. But that doesn’t mean doing so was a particularly good idea.)
Trump’s first month
Trump was arguably propelled into office in part thanks to his opponent’s cavalier handling of sensitive information. But within his first weeks as president, it was clear he wasn’t exactly overcompensating for the sins of Hillary Clinton.
On Feb. 8, 2017, Trump appeared at an Oval Office photo op with Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, where an Associated Press photo appeared to show a lockbag with a key in it on Trump’s desk, in the presence of people without security clearances. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) noted that this raised questions about whether sensitive information was being appropriately safeguarded.
Just three days later, on Feb. 11, Trump turned the Mar-a-Lago terrace into what The Washington Post called an “open-air situation room” following a ballistic missile test by North Korea. Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to be discussing a highly sensitive national security issue and reviewing documents using the light of an aide’s cellphone, all out in the open.
The White House claimed at the time that “no classified material” was discussed openly.
The phones
By this point, it had already been reported that Trump was using an unsecured cellphone. And it was a storyline that would follow him for many months.
Within days of his taking office, the New York Times reported that Trump was using an old, unsecured Android phone to post on Twitter.
In May 2018, Politico reported that Trump was using a White House cellphone without sophisticated security features and that he declined to swap out his Twitter phone on a monthly basis, citing convenience.
By October 2018, the Times reported that intelligence showed Chinese spies were often listening to Trump’s conversations on his iPhone, and even that aides warned Trump that Russian spies were eavesdropping. Aides failed to prevail upon Trump to use more secure landlines. “White House officials say they can only hope he refrains from discussing classified information when he is on them,” the Times noted.
Trump disputed the Times’s report. But by late 2019, phone logs obtained in his first impeachment inquiry appeared to substantiate key aspects of the reporting.
The Russians
Perhaps the most infamous event of all came in May 2017. While the above raised the prospect of Trump’s having exposed classified information, this time we know he actually did it — and to the Russians, no less.
The Post broke the news that Trump had revealed highly classified information to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during a meeting in the Oval Office. The information, considered so sensitive that its details were withheld even from key allies, concerned the Islamic State. It was obtained through an intelligence-sharing arrangement with another country, later revealed to be Israel.
The Post has reported that Trump didn’t identify the information as coming from Israel but that the level of detail he offered would have made it relatively easy to identify the source and possibly how the information was acquired.
It has also reported that intelligence officials initially asked reporters not to identify Israel as the source, suggesting such information might have endangered the life of a spy with access to key information about the Islamic State’s inner workings.
The Iranian explosion
Perhaps the other most direct evidence of Trump’s sharing classified information under questionable circumstances while serving as president came in August 2019, when he tweeted a detailed aerial image of an Iranian launchpad that experts at the time described as “almost certainly highly classified.”
The image appeared to be from a briefing Trump had received about an explosion there, complete with what appeared to be the flash of a camera taking a picture of the document.
The Times later reported that aides had tried to talk Trump out of tweeting the image, cautioning that it could reveal the United States government’s surveillance capabilities. The image also raised questions about whether it revealed Americans to be violating Iran’s airspace, given that its clarity suggested it wasn’t taken via satellite.
In late 2022, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency formally declassified the photo.
The other incidents
Two other incidents were less well publicized but are worth recalling in this moment.
One came in the summer of 2017, when Trump tweeted a response to a Post story reporting that he had ended a covert CIA program to arm moderate Syrian rebels — thereby seemingly confirming that such a classified program did, in fact, exist. (A judge later found that Trump hadn’t technically declassified the program with his statements.)
Another came that same year, in April, when Trump told Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte that the United States had two nuclear submarines off the coast of the Korean Peninsula. The disclosure was revealed in a Philippine transcript of the call between the leaders. It wasn’t clear whether Trump was referring to nuclear-armed submarines or nuclear-powered ones, and he did not appear to give specifics. But the disclosure reportedly caused consternation at the Defense Department.
Witch hunt! Hoax! I don’t think you understand. All government documents belong to Trump, even today. He is omnipotent and always knows exactly the right thing to do. If he wants to share sensitive intelligence, it is just fine, no matter what it is. Because he is perfect, just like his phone calls.