In 2016, a group of Bush administration alumni and Republican foreign policy establishment heavy hitters came together and issued an open letter, publicly pledging that they would not vote for their party’s nominee, Donald Trump, in the upcoming election.
These officials warned that a Trump presidency would “put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.” They added that then-candidate Trump “would be the most reckless president in American history.”
Officials warned that a Trump presidency would “put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
Now, anyone who knows me knows I am no fan of the Bush administration nor the Republican Party’s “establishment,” but what we’ve learned in the past week makes that letter of theirs — that warning of theirs — look particularly prescient. Prophetic, even.
On Tuesday, in a Miami federal courthouse, Trump pled not guilty to 37 felony counts, including willful retention of national defense information, making false statements and conspiracy to obstruct justice. These are the first federal charges ever brought against a former president. In the stunning indictment unsealed last week, we got a look at just how sensitive some of the classified documents retained by Trump were.
According to the indictment, they 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 plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
That’s the kind of stuff that foreign intel agencies would, I’m assuming, literally kill to get their hands on.
For months, that highly sensitive information was just lying around the ex-president’s Florida resort home/wedding venue in all kinds of bizarre places, from a ballroom where, as the indictment notes, events and gatherings often took place, to a bathroom and shower stall at the resort’s lake club.
The boxes were eventually moved to a storage room on the property, where they were later discovered by Trump aide and named co-conspirator, Walt Nauta, to have spilled on the floor. The indictment states that the hallway leading to that storage room “could be reached from multiple outside entrances, including one accessible from the Mar-a-Lago club pool patio through a doorway that was often kept open.”
How convenient — you could have a day at the pool, and then take a quick stroll down the hallway to indulge in some light reading of our nation’s highly sensitive secrets.
For months, that highly sensitive information was just lying around the ex-president’s Florida resort home/wedding venue in all kinds of bizarre places.
The truth is, we didn’t need a 49-page indictment to know how vulnerable Mar-a-Lago is. Remember the Ukrainian woman who infiltrated the resort multiple times after posing as a fake heiress? Or the Chinese businesswoman who was convicted of unlawfully entering Mar-a-Lago while carrying a bag full of electronics? And these are just two we know about.
We can’t forget all the dozens and dozens of temporary foreign workers that Trump hires to, yes, among other things, clean toilets and bathrooms, perhaps like the one that was used to store our nation’s most sensitive secrets.
Now, we are months, perhaps years away from a possible verdict in this case, but what’s already clear to me, as someone who is not a lawyer, but is a U.S. citizen — a voter — is that this man should not be running for high office again.
He shouldn’t be allowed near classified intelligence ever again. Forget president of the United States. Forget commander-in-chief of the United States military; this second indictment confirms Trump is unfit to be the treasurer of your local Rotary Club.
It confirms he is a real and present danger to our nation’s secrets, our nation’s security, and our nation’s democracy.
Mehdi Hasan
Mehdi Hasan is host of "The Mehdi Hasan Show" on Peacock and an MSNBC political analyst. He is a former senior columnist for The Intercept, for which he launched the "Deconstructed" podcast. He was also the presenter of "UpFront" and "Head to Head" on Al Jazeera English. He is the author of two books and the winner of the Society of Professional Journalists' 2018 Sigma Delta Chi Award for Online Column Writing.