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The smoking Sharpie? [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-06-09
The 49-page federal indictment released today against Trump and his close aide Waltine Nauta is easy to take in. Special Prosecutor Jack Smith took to the podium today and advised the American people to read the indictment for themselves, and I took him up on his offer.
The document is described as a “speaking” indictment, meaning that Smith is using his work to communicate the point of view of the government as to what Trump and his aides were doing with these highly sensitive classified documents. It’s clear, and I too invite everyone to read the indictment.
There is a section where some of the documents are described in enough detail as to understand at a glance why each was so sensitive. Nearly all on the list are marked as NOFORN, helpfully defined early in the indictment (p. 6):
The classification marking “NOFORN” stood for “Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals” and denoted that dissemination of that information was limited to United States persons.
The list of documents begin on page 28 and goes on for five pages. Many of the items refer to foreign intelligence and particularly military capabilities of foreign countries.
On page 32, at number 23, we see that this entry is in line with that broad category of Trump’s interests, as it deals with “various foreign countries,” just below other items marked NOFORN (though lacking the marking itself). But note how the item is described:
Document dated August 30, 2019, concerning White House intelligence briefing related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker
Black marker? Handwritten, you say? I couldn’t help but recall Trump’s deft rerouting of a hurricane’s path with just his use of a black marker.
Just by chance, I searched for that date + Trump’s name, and found that on that very date Trump had tweeted out a satellite image of an Iranian launch explosion, the release of which caused consternation and concern throughout the intelligence community.
“We had a photo. I released it, which I have the absolute right to do,” Reuters reported Trump as saying at the time. This is very similar to the defense he put forth recently at the CNN “town hall.”
There were several links from which to choose, some of which reported on the release of classified information itself as well as some focused more on the reaction to it (AP ran with the headline “Trump says he has right to tweet Iran satellite photo”, whereas the Washington Post stated more neutrally “Trump shares potentially revealing image of Iranian launch site on Twitter”). However, as a rule I try to source American news in papers outside the US, to see if their perspective aligns or diverges from the line generally drawn here at home in our own mediasphere. The Toronto Star, on that very date, August 30, 2019, reported this (with my emphasis):
Trump was asked Friday if he had released classified information by posting the photo on Twitter. He says, “We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do.” Asked where he got the photo, he told reporters, “You’ll have to figure that one out yourself.”
… I would say that Jack Smith has it figured out.
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