The indictment, which outlines 37 counts including willful retention of defense information, shows through photos, witness testimony and other evidence
By Iain Marlow and Tony Capaccio
Top-secret documents were left on a ballroom stage for three months. Some of the nation’s most prized secrets spilled out of a box and were scattered across a floor. Others were stacked in a bathroom shower. An attack plan was waved in front of a writer.
The indictment against Donald Trump that was released on Friday offered shocking new details about how the former president and at least one staffer allegedly mishandled some of the nation’s most closely guarded papers. The fresh revelations will unsettle allied nations that share such classified information with the US.
The indictment, which outlines 37 counts including willful retention of defense information, shows through photos, witness testimony and other evidence how cavalierly Trump purportedly treated the papers he kept at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. It will doubtless be a galling list of offenses for former intelligence officers and others who, during their time in service, often could study such documents only in the confines of a secure room — often without mobile phones or any other electronics present.
“There’s a difference between that and intent to share with a hostile power or something like that, which is a proper espionage charge, but even so, it’s on a whole other level,” said Christopher K. Johnson, a former CIA analyst in both Democratic and Republican administrations. “God knows who he showed the stuff to.”
The indictment shows that after his presidency Trump and his staff kept documents from a range of the nation’s spy agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that runs US spy satellites and which is so secret its existence wasn’t officially confirmed until the mid-1990s.
