US federal police seized documents marked “top secret” during a raid on former President Donald Trump’s home on Monday, according to court documents released Friday.
• Read more: Search at Mar-a-Lago: Classified “Top Secret” documents seized from Trump
• Read more: Trump Home Search: Justice Warrant May Be Made Public
Previous episodes recall that Republican billionaires sometimes handled or used classified information while in power.
His powers as president allowed him to decide on his own whether to classify certain classified information. But some of his choices have baffled the intelligence community, to say the least.
Tweeted image
On August 30, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted what appeared to be a high-resolution photo of a rocket or missile launch site in Iran. After a meeting with his intelligence unit, he confirmed that the photo was taken.
He shared information
On May 10, 2017, the President welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak to the White House.
He reveals to them detailed information from a third country in the Middle East about the offensive capabilities of the Islamic State (IS) organization.
But these highly guarded elements were actually from Israel, who were very irritated by this information given to the Russians.
A secret is revealed
In an April 2017 phone conversation, Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart, Rodrigo Duterte, that two US nuclear submarines were sailing off the coast of North Korea and were carrying “a large strike force” with them.
The location of nuclear submarines, core components of the US nuclear deterrent, is a closely guarded secret by the Pentagon.
A nuclear device is exposed
In an interview with American star journalist Bob Woodward in 2019, Donald Trump mentioned the existence of a secret US nuclear weapon.
“I built a weapons system that nobody had before in this country, a nuclear thing,” he said. “We have something Putin or Xi have never heard of.”
Many details
Revealing the death of Islamic State (IS) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in a US strike in October 2019, the US president disclosed many details — the number of helicopters involved, commandos entering the building, advance surveillance via ISIS phones and the Internet — normally kept secret by the Pentagon.
The information would allow America’s adversaries to better understand how its military is operating, former special forces commander Michael Nagata told Politico.
A misinformed environment
Donald Trump, finally, doesn’t seem to be telling his intelligence chiefs everything.
In July 2018, intelligence chief Dan Coats was surprised at a briefing when Mr Trump was told the White House would invite Vladimir Putin to Washington, who had spoken in Helsinki.
“Excuse me?” He had said.
Mr. Coates 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.
