By: David French – nytimes.com – June 9, 2023

This article was updated to reflect news developments.

Donald Trump has been indicted. Again. And this time, it is richly deserved, even if one includes special considerations related to the unique recent history of public officials mishandling classified documents. The indictment is devastating, and the details are shocking. It’s hard to imagine a more brazen and irresponsible mishandling of our nation’s secrets.

In one sense, the indictment didn’t truly alter the basic narrative we’ve known for some time. Previous Justice Department court filings related to the Mar-a-Lago search warrant already made a series of damning claims against Trump. According to the department, in 2021 the National Archives and Records Administration corresponded with Trump’s team, hoping to obtain the “transfer of what it perceived were missing records from his administration.” In January 2022, Trump provided the archives with 15 boxes of records.

When it reviewed the documents, it found 184 with classification markings and 25 marked “top secret.” The inclusion of such documents caused the National Archives to contact the Justice Department, which promptly began efforts to determine if Trump retained any additional classified information. After the F.B.I. found evidence that more boxes remained at Mar-a-Lago and they were “also likely to contain classified information,” the department obtained a grand jury subpoena demanding “any and all” records in Trump’s possession that contained classification markings. On June 3, 2022, the Trump legal team provided a small batch of files to department officials and included a sworn certification letter indicating that Trump’s custodian of records had conducted a “diligent search” to locate any documents responsive to the subpoena and that the custodian had produced all such documents.

According to the Justice Department, this certification was not accurate. While the Trump team produced 38 additional documents bearing classification markings (including 17 marked “top secret”) in its subpoena response, the department believed that there were still more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. On the basis of “multiple sources of evidence” indicating that the response to the grand jury subpoena was “incomplete,” on Aug. 8 the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago. It claims that search uncovered more than 100 additional classified records, “including information classified at the highest levels.”

That much we already knew. But the indictment itself contains extraordinary additional details that should affect our understanding of the case. First, it makes clear that Trump possessed truly consequential national secrets. The classified information he squirreled away “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries, United States nuclear programs, potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”

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Source: Opinion | Trump’s Indictment: Given What We Know, Not Charging Him Would Be the Greater Scandal – The New York Times