Why Trump’s Stated Excuse for Taking Classified Documents Is Actually Deeply Incriminating

On Friday, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Avril Haines informed Congress that her office will lead an “assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents” that were housed at former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. We can already anticipate broad outlines of what such an assessment may find – not in terms of the substantive policy areas and intelligence product that the classified documents cover because that is currently unknown, but in terms of the sources and methods potentially compromised by such disclosures based on publicly available information about the classified material at issue.

In this article, I focus on a specific aspect related to the national security risks from the disclosure of such documents. I address on its own terms Trump and his allies’ claim that, while president, he issued either a general or standing declassification order that covered these documents. If that is to be the defense on which the former president relies in the court of public opinion or in a court of law, we should understand the national security implications that would flow from such a presidential decision. It should be shocking to the American public and to jurors in a courtroom to hear such a line of defense to allegations of mishandling national defense information. That justifiable shock can come, however, only if people comprehend the grievous harms to national security from any such order.