Radioactive

I don't think it's much of a coincidence that a day after a trump-friendly judge tried to halt the Justice Department's investigation into trump's taking and mishandling of classified documents to Mar-A-Lago the FBI lets it drop to the Washington Post that they've already uncovered evidence that trump was mishandling nuclear intel (paywalled): 

A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.

Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special-access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.

Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location...

After months of trying, according to government court filings, the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8.

It was in this last batch of government secrets, the people familiar with the matter said, that the information about a foreign government’s nuclear-defense readiness was found. These people did not identify the foreign government in question, say where at Mar-a-Lago the document was found or offer additional details about one of the Justice Department’s most sensitive national security investigations...

If I recall since August when the warrant to search Mar-A-Lago took place, commentators were noting that if trump was caught with any kind of classified information on nuclear security, he was in serious legal trouble. As documented by Alex Wellerstein at the Lawfare blog: 

If Trump’s purported declassification of these documents was to be taken seriously, one would expect that there would have to be a record of this somewhere, and that this would also mean that the underlying information in those documents would have to be declassified across the board: not just in those documents, but in any documents that contain them. Depending on what is in those documents, that would be a wide-ranging action with rippling effects as guidelines got updated accordingly. Clearly, it did not have that effect, or the FBI would not have seized them and declared them classified. In effect, Trump’s defense appears to be that the documents were secretly declassified. (editor's note: there is no such thing as double secret probation Secretly Declassified)

For Restricted Data, the power of the president to declassify is even less clear. The updated version of the Atomic Energy Act that is currently on the books has detailed descriptions of how to remove information from the Restricted Data category. That process is initiated by the Department of Energy (as successor to the Atomic Energy Commission), not the president. The only explicit role the president has in this process is that if the Department of Energy and Department of Defense disagree on whether something should be declassified, the president acts as the tie-breaker. The president is given other explicit powers regarding Restricted Data, like the ability to direct the Department of Defense to share it with allied nations under certain circumstances (like planning for mutual defense, such as with NATO), but not declassification. The fact that the law does not explicitly give presidents the power to blanket declassify things, but does give them a role in declassification and other matters regarding Restricted Data, suggests that Congress’s intent was not to allow the president to declassify Restricted Data at will...

Another thing to consider is that trump's storing of these documents at an open Mar-A-Lago violated national security requirements that top secret classified materials need to be detained in secured rooms. Called SCIF - for Sensitive Compartments Information Facility - trump never bothered to put all those classified documents in such a room (there's supposed to have been one installed at Mar-A-Lago, but that's not where the FBI found the classified docs).

One last thing to consider is the speculation about the "nuclear capabilities" materials the FBI found in their August search - these were the documents that trump kept lying about and refused to hand back to National Archives - is that it involved another nation's nuclear secrets. This is where this scandal turns into a diplomatic and military nightmare. 

There's not that many nations with nuclear capabilities - aka World Ending Warheads of Mass Destruction - so the list of suspects is short. Either trump was mishandling secrets that involved an allied nation - The United Kingdom, France, Israel, maybe Pakistan and maybe India - or nations that are in competition (if not open hostility) with us on the global stage - China, Russia, North Korea, and (thanks to trump's gutting of Obama's agreement with them) Iran.

One of those nations has to realize that trump could well have exposed one of their most important security details of their own military. If it's an opposing nation we had intel on, if these documents get back to them they can find out how our nation's intel-gathering works and figure out likely sources and leaks. This means our spies and informants are doomed if they haven't been already, and there's concerns this has already happened. 

If it's an allied nation that's been exposed, they have got to be PISSED at trump, and at us for letting this buffoon of an orange Shitgibbon keep his greasy Cheeto fingers on their most valued secrets. Twitter has been speculating about the possibility of trump trading away Israeli secrets to where Mossad - notoriously trigger-happy - would have to act to defend their nation's safety.

No matter what, our foreign allies have to realize that if trump succeeds in returning to power in 2024, there is no way they can ever trust the United States Intelligence Community with a goddamn thing. We can lose our allies and ruin our ability to defend ourselves.

I'm not a lawyer nor an expert on foreign policy, but I wonder if the nation exposed by trump's betrayal would have the power to call for his arrest and trial in their nation for espionage, if it's possible for them to extradite him, hold him accountable for his failures. If the American legal system won't hold trump accountable, maybe theirs will. 

This situation keeps getting worse for trump, not better. The Justice Department is making it clear to Judge Cannon that she may think she can stall the investigation to save trump, but it's already too late. They've already got enough evidence of federal criminal acts by trump to drop these reports to the national media and make it clear they've got even more details that Cannon and trump can't contain. If she stops the investigation, Fine, DOJ is telling us, we can go to trial with the just the stuff we've already got. 

They've got trump violating the Presidential Records Act. They've got him with 300 classified documents he didn't keep secured and shouldn't have had in the first place. They've got trump hoarding radioactive-hot intel on a nation's nuclear capabilities that he has no power to declassify on his own whim.

In some respects they don't need to wait. The Justice Department can arguably go to a judge in the DC district and file criminal charges on trump whenever they need to. If they're delaying, it's either because they're still considering whether to appeal Cannon's Special Master stunt or they're holding off on any politically explosive decision before the midterm elections.

In some respects they shouldn't wait. Every minute that trump does not answer for the crimes he's documented committing is a minute that justice is denied. Arrest him, charge him, hold him in a tiny jail cell where he can rail and fume only to himself. Let justice be done, goddammit.