The Mar-a-Lago Raid Was Necessary to Protect U.S. Intelligence

As a congressional staffer, I saw the executive branch under President Obama mischaracterize intelligence it didn’t want to share with oversight committees for political reasons as “operational” or “raw.” The administration preferred analyses so laden with posterior-covering caveats that they were useless to legislators.

Second, every member of the national-security establishment mishandles classified information at some point. A standard question on a common polygraph test for government workers is whether an examinee has ever mishandled classified information. If examinees reply honestly, almost all would have to admit they had. Forgetting to lock a computer screen before going for a coffee refill, or rushing to a source meeting in the field without removing a hard drive and placing it in a safe, qualifies as mishandling. (The genteel response is for a colleague to remedy these errors and privately let the offender know.) In war zones, handling procedures are often honored in the breach, given the necessity of quickly relaying information about time-sensitive targets or force-protection threats to military commanders.

So if the government hides information it could safely share and pretextually alleges mishandling to punish people, why was the execution of a search warrant to secure classified documents from Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence likely prudent? For three reasons.

First, anything worth relaying in person to a commander in chief, given the short time a White House chief of staff allows for the presidential daily brief, is sensitive.

Information presented to a U.S. president is often about hard targets—China, Russia, North Korea or Iran—and is gleaned from delicately placed human sources risking their lives to assist the U.S. or technologies that cost billions of dollars to develop. In many cases the existence of these technologies is unknown to our adversaries. Closely guarded information about nuclear warning, command-and-control and prospective targets uniquely involves the president.

Second, Mr. Trump isn’t simply negligent in handling classified information. He’s defiant. Elected officials and judges earn access to secrets by winning elections or Senate confirmation, not by any clearance-adjudication process. Sitting presidents have the authority to declassify information (except related to nuclear weapons). Therefore, Mr. Trump’s spontaneous sharing of counterterrorism information with Russian officials, the capabilities of U.S. spy satellites with his

Twitter

audience, and U.S. efforts toward hypersonic weapons with the press, though wildly irresponsible, weren’t criminal.

Yet Mr. Trump is no longer commander in chief. Given his record, President Biden understandably declined to grant him any clearance. There is no written record yet of the information seized being declassified before Jan. 20, 2021. Furthermore, Mr. Trump’s admitted conduct is precisely within the terms of the relevant statute, 18 U.S. Code Section 793: He willfully retained the documents and failed to deliver them when the government demanded them.

Third, that the documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago doesn’t add to Mr. Trump’s defense. The Secret Service secures former presidents’ residences from would-be assassins, but Mr. Trump primarily resides at clubs that individuals can join for a fee and that employ large numbers of service staff. There is little doubt that competent foreign intelligence services have placed agents at these locations since 2017, and it is certain that those services employ officers skilled in obtaining access to otherwise secure spaces to photograph their contents.

The public might never know the substance of the documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago. And former FBI Director

James Comey’s

decision not to prosecute

Hillary Clinton

for similarly serious misconduct vastly complicates Attorney General

Merrick Garland’s

decision on whether to prosecute Mr. Trump. But Mr. Trump’s adamant refusal to return these documents offered FBI Director

Christopher Wray,

whose bureau has a duty to mitigate counterintelligence threats, no choice but to seize them lawfully.

Mr. Carroll served as senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly (2017-18), senior counsel to House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King (2011-13), and a CIA and Army officer.