OPINION:
Not being an attorney but having been in the military, where I was involved with classified documents and had a top secret clearance, I am intrigued by the Trump indictment based on the 1917 Espionage Act.
The indictment claims that former President Donald Trump possessed hundreds of classified documents, and showed pictures of approximately 200 boxes stored at his residence. Yet after the FBI raid on Mr. Trump’s residence, the FBI seized only 102 classified documents, which would probably fit inside an average-sized briefcase.
In looking at the descriptions of those classified documents (as provided in the indictment), it is not possible to assess their value. For example, in 2023, just what value could there be in several 2018 classified top secret White House briefings on some foreign countries?
What, then, was so urgent, valuable and important about these documents that the National Archives found it necessary to have the FBI search Mr. Trump’s residence to get them back?
The above pose obvious questions. Why and on what basis is the Department of Justice charging a former president with criminal espionage? Of what real value are these documents to a person seeking to willfully commit espionage?
It seems to me that the issue is simply an administrative one that should be resolved in terms of the 1978 Presidential Records Act, not the Espionage Act of 1917. I wonder if DOJ is simply relying exclusively on the term “classified documents” to make its case.
DANIEL P. McKIM
Springfield, Virginia
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