Intelligence officials evaluate security risk of Trump’s insecure documents

Geoff Bennett:

Good evening. It's great to be with you. And we start tonight with the latest surrounding the FBI seizure of classified documents from former President Trump's Florida property. This Thursday, a federal judge will decide whether to grant Mr. Trump's request for a third party, a so called Special Master to decide if some of the documents are legally protected. The judge has already signaled a quote, preliminary intent to do so.

And as we've reported U.S. intelligence officials informed Congress that they will evaluate the potential national security risks stemming from Mr. Trump's possession of the classified materials. Hugo Lowell is a congressional reporter for The Guardian. And he's with us now to discuss all this.

Hugo, it's great to have you with us. And the fact that this U.S. District Judge Eileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump in 2020, the fact that she's now granting his legal teams request for a third party to review the documents seized during the FBI search. What does that mean practically?

Hugo Lowell, Congressional Reporter, The Guardian:

Well, practically, it means that the DOJ is going to have to file a response and all of the interested parties. So that's Trump's legal team and the Justice Department, we're going to go down to Palm Beach on Thursday. And they're going to make their case for either to appoint a special master or in during the DOJ as case dog to oppose the motion entirely.

I mean, the preliminary order effectively means that the judge in this case is suggesting that she is likely to grant a special master unless she hears arguments that compel her to rule otherwise. So that's the kind of practical implications here.

Geoff Bennett:

The bottom line, though, is that it doesn't change the underlying facts of the case, nor does it limit Donald Trump's legal exposure. Is that right?

Hugo Lowell:

Yes, it doesn't change the underlying facts. It doesn't change the underlying investigation. The fact of the matter is the former president had a bunch of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that range from kind of classified to top secret to some of the most sensitive government secrets that the the United States holds. And the FBI is investigating Trump for under the Espionage Act and also for potential obstruction.

And so whether or not he gets a special master in this case is not going to change the investigation. And I think that's the one thing that Trump's lawyers have fixated on and are kind of worried by because they're not sure where this investigation goes next.

Geoff Bennett:

We also learned this weekend that intelligence officials are planning to conduct an assessment of the national security fallout. And what's striking about this is that it's the first known acknowledgement by the intelligence community of the potential damage caused by Mr. Trump's possession of these highly classified documents, including human source intelligence.

Hugo Lowell:

Yes, so the DNI I told Congress on Friday that she was going to initiate a risk assessment. It's a little bit different from a damage assessment. The risk assessment basically means was there a risk to national security through Trump's mishandling of these government documents that he had hold it at Mar-a-Lago.

The fact that the risk assessments suggest to me that the intelligence community is not sure whether they've been accessed by adversaries or spies or any sort of people who didn't have the clearance to actually look at these documents and might harm the United States. So that's kind of the preliminary basis. If they do the risk assessment, and they find that was exposure to sources and methods to the identities of kind of clandestine sources, then it becomes a damage assessment. And that's much, much more serious, and that would greatly increase the legal exposure that Trump has here.

Geoff Bennett:

A big picture question for you, Hugo, because I've been talking to legal experts and former prosecutors, as I know you have, who say that there exists in the public realm, enough evidence to indict Donald Trump. The fact that the DOJ hasn't done that, the fact that the DOJ fought the release of this redacted affidavit suggests potentially, that there's something else here that there's something more to the heart of this case. Is that your assessment? Is that your read of things based on your reporting?

Hugo Lowell:

Yes, I think that's right. So the fact that this is still an investigation in early stages, that's what the Justice Department said in court last week, I think is really interesting. A lot of the obstruction elements and a lot of the sources and methods that the FBI and the Justice Department is using in this investigation were all redacted from that affidavit, that really suggests that this is an ongoing investigation. They don't know where this may lead.

The fact of the matter is they have a lot of civilian sources. And people close the former president that they're still interviewing, I thought it was really interesting. You know, I spoke to a number of people close to the former president, and they said, Look, you know, we've been contacted by the FBI, but we haven't actually spoken to them yet. That's a big development, because that means the FBI managed to get a search warrant based on partial information. And it was already so damning that the judge granted it and now they're moving towards actually speaking to people close the former president, and that could really open the investigation much, much further.

Geoff Bennett:

I was going to ask you what you were hearing from people in the former president's orbit and then you were just down at Mar-a-Lago doing some reporting. What are you going to be watching for as the story progresses, as this case really progresses?

Hugo Lowell:

I think the one thing we will have to focus on is the obstruction element of this investigation. I think people are really focused on the espionage element because there were so many classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that Trump had ahold of there, but the real possible legal peril that could arise from all of this is the obstruction. Did Trump intend to impede an official investigation into his mishandling of these documents? Did he try and stop the National Archives from getting the documents back? Did he mislead his lawyers? Did instruct his lawyers not to cooperate with the investigation?

I mean, that's the one thing that the Trump lawyers don't like talking about. They're happy to talk about everything else. But the one thing they don't have insight into, and the one thing that I think quite anxious about is this obstruction, and whether this starts to take on a whole new dimension of its own.

Geoff Bennett:

Great reporting, as always, Hugo Lowell of The Guardian, thanks so much for being with us.

Hugo Lowell:

Thank you.