Special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago documents case against Donald Trump is mainly concerned with the way he handled classified government documents after leaving office in January 2021.
The former president, Smith alleges, jeopardized the United States' national security when he moved those documents to Mar-a-Lago; the documents, according to Smith, never should have been removed from Washington, D.C. Trump has maintained that the White House documents in question were declassified — and that he never violated any federal laws.
But according to ABC News reporters Katherine Faulders, Mike Levine, and Alexander Mallin, there were concerns about Trump's handling of classified documents even before he left office.
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After an Iranian rocket exploded in 2019, they report, Trump met with senior U.S. officials and was given a "highly classified image of the blast's catastrophic aftermath." And despite the fact that it was marked classified, Trump posted it on X, then Twitter.
A former senior Trump official, quoted anonymously, told ABC News, "It was so upsetting, and people were really angry."
Faulders, Levine, and Mallin recall that the "public pushback to Trump's post was immediate."
"Intelligence experts and even international media questioned whether U.S. interests had just been endangered by what Trump did," the reporters explain. "When pressed about it at the White House, Trump insisted he hadn't released classified information because he had an 'absolute right to do' it."
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The reporters note that the 2019 image, according to sources, was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern that Trump showed during his presidency.
"While much of Smith's sprawling classified documents investigation has focused on how Trump handled classified materials after leaving the White House," Faulders, Levine, and Mallin report, "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…. Throughout Trump's presidency, many of those who interacted with Trump every day saw him bring classified documents to unsecured locations, raising concerns among some of them, several witnesses told Smith's team, the sources said."
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Read ABC News' full report at this link.
