Our Sneak Preview of Trump's Second-Term

Trump's last few weeks in office were a race between malevolence and incompetence. In his second term I'm pretty sure I know which attribute wins that race.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

One of the cruel ironies of the 2016 election is that Hilary Clinton lost the Electoral College in no small part due to her mishandling of classified documents. Trump hammered her on this point. The mainstream media piled on, because:

1. Clinton ran afoul of national security guidelines in creating her own email server;

2. There was a legitimate investigation into the subject;

3. The story seemed to epitomize Clinton’s belief that she was above the rules;

4. Everyone thought Clinton was going to win and therefore merited greater scrutiny; and

5. Negative stories about Hillary Clinton generated almost as much traffic as negative stories about Trump.

Speaking of Trump, let’s get back to the irony! Trump’s first term as president relegated Clinton’s security gaffes to the minor leagues. Trump spilled national security secrets to high-ranking Russian officials in the Oval Office. He talked about top-secret documents with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the open air at Mar-a-Lago. He tweeted out classified satellite imagery. He has been indicted for his felonious post-presidential handling of classified information. The evidence for that charge is of the smoking-gun variety. FFS, this topic has its own (very long) Wikipedia page.

All of this is to say that when CNN’s Jeremy Herb, Katie Bo Lillis, Natasha Bertrand, Evan Perez and Zachary Cohen broke their story on Friday, it was in part another data point confirming that neither Donald Trump nor his coterie should be trusted with classified information:

A binder containing highly classified information related to Russian election interference went missing at the end of Donald Trump’s presidency, raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Its disappearance, which has not been previously reported, was so concerning that intelligence officials briefed Senate Intelligence Committee leaders last year about the missing materials and the government’s efforts to retrieve them, the sources said.

In the two-plus years since Trump left office, the missing intelligence does not appear to have been found.

The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.

The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman, Julian Barnes, and Charlie Savage provided a follow-up story explaining, “The substance of the material — a redacted version of which has since been made public under the Freedom of Information Act and is posted on the website of the F.B.I. — is not considered particularly sensitive, the official said. But the raw version in the binder contained details that intelligence agencies believe could reveal secret sources and methods.”

You’ll have to read both stories in their entirety to understand the myriad details surrounding the unredacted binder. The tl;dr version of CNN’s exclusive about the binder in question:

1. Trump wanted to declassify a lot of documents before he left office;

2. Lawyers and other officials at the White House, Justice, and intelligence community were concerned about revealing sources and methods and potential violations of the Privacy Act;

3. According to Cassidy Hutchinson, the last person to possess the binder was Trump’s last chief of staff, Mark Meadows, in his safe, in his White House office. “Hutchinson writes in her book that she saw Meadows get into his limo the night of January 19 with the ‘original Crossfire Hurricane binder tucked under his arm.’”¹

4. Meadows’ attorney George Terwilliger issued a denial: “Mr. Meadows was keenly aware of and adhered to requirements for the proper handling of classified material, any such material that he handled or was in his possession has been treated accordingly and any suggestion that he is responsible for any missing binder or other classified information is flat wrong.”

The Times story mostly confirms CNN’s scoop but does offer a few new details, including:

1. The actual binder is “about 10 inches thick and containing about 2,700 pages.” That’s a big binder; and

2. Ironically enough — there’s that word again! — Trump seems to confirm Hutchinson’s claim that Meadows has the binder: “Mr. Trump did not address a question about whether he himself had some of the material. But when a Trump aide present for the [an April 2021] interview asked him, ‘Does Meadows have those?’ Mr. Trump replied, ‘Meadows has them.’”

The deeper story, however, is the chaos that was the last few weeks of the Trump administration. The president kept trying to declassify everything in the belief that throwing more stuff at the press would somehow make it seem as though the Russians had not interfered in the 2016 election in his favor. As CNN noted in their story, however, “the intelligence referenced in the report actually proved the opposite of what Republicans were claiming… it showed that Russia was meddling in US elections and seeking to personally manipulate Trump and help him win. The Democratic view was corroborated in 2020 by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, which concluded that the 2016 assessment was a ‘sound intelligence product’ and that analysts were under no political pressure to reach specific conclusions.”

Trump’s efforts to declassify went down to the wire. CNN notes that on January 20th, “sometime between 11 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. that morning, Meadows emerged from the White House in a hurry to deliver a copy of the binder to the Justice Department. Hutchinson recalled Meadows asking his security detail, ‘How quickly can we get this to DOJ?’” Meadows’ authority expired at noon on the 20th. That is the very definition of last-minute effort!

There are plenty of stories out there about Trump’s efforts to enact sweeping, radical policy shifts during his final months in office. Most of the time these efforts were botched by incompetent flunkies. Trump’s malevolence was overwhelmed by the incompetence of his subordinates when faced with bureaucratic resistance.

If Trump wins in 2024, the witless incompetence of the Ric Genells and Kash Patels of Trumpworld will likely remain a constant. The difference is that they will have four years to overwhelm whatever remains of the professional civil service. The malevolence will win out.

And future generations will never be able to understand why Hillary Clinton’s emails were such a big deal.

1. Side note: CNN quotes Hutchinson telling the January 6th committee, “I just know Mr. Meadows. He wouldn't have had that one copied unless he did it on his own, but I don't think he knows how to use a copy machine.” I can’t let this detail go. What white-collar worker under the age of 70 doesn’t know how to use a goddamn copier?!