Former President Donald Trump's staff at the White House were enraged with the cavalier way he handled classified information, according to a new report from ABC News.
"While much of [Special Counsel Jack] Smith's sprawling classified documents investigation has focused on how Trump handled classified materials after leaving the White House, a wide array of former aides and advisers — including personal valets, press assistants, senior national security officials, and even Trump's briefers from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — have provided Smith with firsthand accounts about how Trump allegedly handled and used intelligence while still in office," reported Katherine Faulders, Mike Levine, and Alexander Mallin.
One of the key incidents given more context in the report was when Trump shared a picture of a highly classified rocket explosion at an Iranian launch site.
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"The image was captured by a U.S. satellite whose true capabilities were a tightly guarded secret. But Trump wanted to share it with the world — he thought it was especially 'sexy' because it was marked classified, one of his former advisers later recalled to special counsel Jack Smith's investigators, according to sources familiar with the former adviser's statements," said the report. One source who served as an adviser to the former president said, "It was so upsetting, and people were really angry."
When Smith interviewed former advisers close to Trump, said the report, they "described a president who could erupt in anger when presented with intelligence he didn't want to hear, who routinely reviewed and stored classified information in unsecured locations, and who had what some former officials described as 'a cavalier attitude' toward the damage that could be done by its disclosure, according to sources."
The classified documents case is currently stalled, as Judge Aileen Cannon, a far-right jurist appointed by Trump himself, sorts through the procedural issues, although she has yet to settle on a new date to hold the trial as the old date is now impossible.
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