White House aides were afraid Trump blabbed about classified info to reporters: Ex-DHS chiefDonald Trump's one-time Homeland Security chief of staff Miles Taylor recounted an incident in his book "Blowback: A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump" in which White House staffers were afraid he had exposed classified information to reporters, said NBC News on Friday.
Trump is now under indictment for Espionage Act violations and obstruction of justice, after he hoarded boxes of highly classified military secrets at his Mar-a-Lago country club in South Florida. One of his top aides who allegedly helped him conceal the boxes from authorities, Walt Nauta, is also facing charges.
"Miles Taylor, who was a top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, writes about the 2018 episode in a book set to be published this month," reported Peter Nicholas. "As a sitting president at the time, Trump had broad powers to declassify information. Yet the incident Taylor describes suggests that his aides still believed he needed to show more care toward state secrets — an issue that landed him in legal peril after he left office and took sensitive records with him."
"During his time in office, some senior aides worried about Trump’s treatment of state secrets. In an interview, [former National Security Adviser John] Bolton said that when Trump would get briefings, aides would 'show him graphics, and that’s where the danger came of him grabbing something and keeping it,'" said the report. "Asking Trump to return material he’d been given wasn't so easy, Bolton said. 'He’s the president of the United States,' Bolton said. 'Are you supposed to say, ‘Mr. President, let’s be clear. We don’t trust you. Give us the document back.’'"
According to the report, Taylor also alleges in the book that Trump asked his staffers if they could wiretap his aides to figure out who was speaking to the press.
Taylor, a longtime critic of the former president, was the author of an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times, in which he described himself as part of a "resistance" movement inside the White House to constrain Trump's worst impulses.
AFPWhite House officials worried Trump showed reporters classified material while in office, new book recountsFormer Trump aide Miles Taylor details an episode in which White House staff discussed a 2018 Oval Office incident
WASHINGTON — A forthcoming book by an ex-Trump administration aide describes an episode in which officials worried that then-President Donald Trump was cavalier in his handling of classified information while talking to reporters, according to a copy obtained by NBC News.
Miles Taylor, who was a top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, writes about the 2018 episode in a book set to be published this month. As a sitting president at the time, Trump had broad powers to declassify information. Yet the incident Taylor describes suggests that his aides still believed he needed to show more care toward state secrets — an issue that landed him in legal peril after he left office and took sensitive records with him.
Taylor is a prominent critic of Trump. He authored an anonymous op-ed while working at the Department of Homeland Security, in which he said that many senior administration officials were trying to limit Trump’s impulses and frustrate his agenda.
Also in the book, excerpts of which were obtained first by NBC News, Taylor describes having heard about Trump’s interest in “tapping” the phones of White House aides in a bid to stanch press leaks. Former White House chief of staff John Kelly said in an interview with NBC News that Trump had wanted to pursue leakers by tapping phones, but that Kelly pushed back and never carried it out.
Trump had long been angry over press leaks, as have past presidents of both parties. In his book, “The Briefing,” Sean Spicer wrote that he was “under relentless pressure to find leakers” as press secretary during Trump’s first year in office. Former senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway wrote in her book, “Here’s the Deal,” that in Trump’s view, “leakers were traitors and weaklings.”
Trump was still president when the episode Taylor described unfolded Oct. 18, 2018. Taylor writes that he was in a private meeting in the West Wing with John Bolton, who was then Trump’s national security adviser.
Then-White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders came into Bolton’s office and described an interview that Trump had given in the Oval Office, according to Taylor’s book, “Blowback.” (It’s common for White House press aides to sit in when the president gives interviews.)
Trump had been talking to the reporters about Jamal Khashoggi, the dissident and journalist who was killed that month by Saudi assassins in Turkey.
Sanders told Bolton that the president had picked up classified documents relating to intelligence on Khashoggi’s death and displayed them, Taylor writes, but that the reporters were unlikely to have been able to read the text.
Bolton gasped at first, but “breathed a sigh of relief” when Sanders told him there had been no cameras in the room, according to the book.
Still, “We were all disturbed by the lapse in protocol and poor protection of classified information,” Taylor writes.
Bolton, in an interview with NBC News, said he did not recall the conversation with Sanders. He did not dispute that it happened. A spokeswoman for Sanders, now the governor of Arkansas, declined to comment.
During his time in office, some senior aides worried about Trump’s treatment of state secrets. In an interview, Bolton said that when Trump would get briefings, aides would “show him graphics, and that’s where the danger came of him grabbing something and keeping it.”
Asking Trump to return material he’d been given wasn't so easy, Bolton said.
“He’s the president of the United States,” Bolton said. “Are you supposed to say, ‘Mr. President, let’s be clear. We don’t trust you. Give us the document back.’ ”
Trump now faces criminal charges for his handling of classified documents after he left office. An indictment filed in a Florida court last month included a redacted transcript of a 2021 conversation Trump had with a writer, publisher and two of his aides at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump appeared to discuss a sensitive military document that he describes as a “plan of attack” against Iran that had been given to him by a U.S. military official. In an audio recording of that discussion that was separately obtained by NBC News, he says the document includes “secret information.”
“I have a big pile of papers,” Trump says amid sounds of rustling papers. “They presented me this. This is off the record. But they presented me this.”
The indictment states that none of the people meeting with Trump that day had either the security clearances or “need-to-know” about the attack plans.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in the case. Last month, he told a Fox News anchor that he did not have a classified document and that he was referring to “newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.” He told the news outlet Semafor that he had been holding up papers and engaging in “bravado” but “had no documents.”
As a sitting president, Trump, of course, was entitled to see classified information and empowered to declassify material. There is a process for declassifying information before disclosure. Kelly, his second of four White House chiefs of staff, said in an interview that he put in place procedures meant to safeguard classified material.
Kelly, a retired four-star general, said that he had cautioned Trump “that he should never, ever share classified information with anyone that does not have the proper security clearance, as U.S. national security and lives are put at risk.”
Explaining some of the practices he adopted from his military career, Kelly said that after displaying classified material as part of a briefing, White House aides were supposed to “collect it back in order to secure it properly.”
"We did not leave classified material with him, and the same procedures applied to me and the rest of the staff, as well,” Kelly added.
Alberto Gonzales, former White House counsel and attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview: “I would certainly advise [any] president not to even discuss classified information in front of reporters or someone who doesn’t have a security clearance. You can argue, ‘I have the authority as president of the United States to declassify it,’ but you classify information to protect the nation’s secrets.”
Taylor’s book does not specify which news outlet interviewed Trump when he discussed the Khashoggi killing, but he said in an interview it was on Oct. 18, 2018. A New York Times article published that same day describes an interview that Trump had with the paper in the Oval Office. The lead paragraph said that Trump voiced “confidence in intelligence reports from multiple sources that strongly suggest a high-level Saudi role in Mr. Khashoggi’s assassination.”
The New York Times declined to comment.
Taylor has become one of the most outspoken Trump administration alumni to turn against the former president. His op–ed article appeared in The New York Times in September 2018 under the headline, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” In it, he wrote that Trump “continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.” Taylor’s identity remained a mystery until he outed himself in 2020.
Trump savaged the author after the unmasking, calling him “a sleazebag who never worked in the White House” and saying he should be prosecuted.
Taylor, then a Republican, opposed Trump’s re-election that year, appearing in a video supporting Joe Biden’s candidacy and denouncing Trump as “unfocused” and “undisciplined.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/officials-worried-trump-showed-reporters-classified-rcna92331'He is the man': Watergate prosecutor explains who could doom Trump in election probe
There is likely one man at the center of Jack Smith's investigation into Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and he has already testified before the grand jury, according to Watergate lawyer Nick Ackerman.
Ackerman appeared on CNN Friday night, when he was asked which of the Trump world "players" he thought Smith would be "most interested in." Ackerman previously said Rudy Giuliani's voluntary interview could spell trouble for Trump.
In this case, though, Ackerman turned his attention to Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
"In terms of all those people, I mean in terms of the person who can put it all together, I believe is Mark Meadows," Ackerman told the host. "He was the chief of staff. He was really the in between person between the Willard hotel people, Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, General Flynn and Donald Trump."
Ackerman added that we know from Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony that Meadows "was going to go to a meeting on January 5th at the Willard hotel."
"But due to her kind of warning, he did it over the phone," Ackerman said. "But he knew what was going on. He was curing the messages between all the key players and Donald Trump. So if I had to pick one person on there that I think is the most important, he is the man. And from what we know, he has already testified in the grand jury."
Ackerman concluded:
"Now, I wouldn't believe that he would be testifying in the grand jury unless he had worked out some kind of a deal and he is basically coming clean on everything that he knows."
Watch:
