US federal police seized documents marked “top secret” during their search of former President Donald Trump’s home on Monday, according to court documents released Friday.
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Previous episodes mention that the Republican billionaire sometimes handled or used classified information with a certain lightness when he was in power.
His powers as president allowed him to decide on his own to declassify some classified information. But some of his choices baffled the intelligence community to say the least.
Tweet image
On August 30, 2019, Donald Trump posted on Twitter a photo of what appeared to be a high-resolution image of a missile or launch pad in Iran. After a meeting with his intelligence services, he confirmed that he had taken the photo.
Shared information
On May 10, 2017, the President received at the White House Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak.
He reveals to them detailed information from a third country in the Middle East about the offensive capabilities of the Islamic State (ISIS).
But these highly protective elements actually came from Israel, and they are very angry to see this information given to the Russians.
secret revealed
In a phone conversation in April 2017, Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart Rodrigo Duterte that two US nuclear submarines were sailing off the North Korean coast, carrying a “huge strike force” with them, according to the Philippine presidency.
The location of nuclear submarines, central elements of the US nuclear deterrent, is a closely guarded secret by the Pentagon.
Nuclear device detected
In an interview with American journalist Bob Woodward in 2019, Donald Trump mentioned the existence of a secret US nuclear device.
“I built a weapons system, a nuclear thing, that no one in this country had before,” he said. “We have something that neither Putin nor Xi has heard of.”
Too many details
In revealing the killing of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019, the US president provided many details – the number of helicopters involved, the entry of commandos into the building, prior espionage via ISIS phones and the Internet – usually concealed by the Pentagon. .
This information could allow US adversaries to better understand how its military operates, former Special Forces commander Michael Nagata estimates with Politico.
misleading environment
Finally, it appears that Donald Trump has not told the intelligence chiefs everything.
In July 2018, intelligence chief Dan Coats seemed surprised when he was told, at a conference, that the White House was inviting Vladimir Putin, with whom Trump had just spoken in Helsinki, to Washington.
“Sorry?” He had said.
Mr Coats also admitted that he was left in the dark about the content of the meeting of heads of state in Finland. “I don’t know what happened during that meeting,” he said three days after the interview.
