Trump indictment unsealed: The classified documents are shockingly sensitive—and their mishandling is even more dangerous for national security than we thought.
SlateFormer President Donald Trump’s indictment, which was unsealed Friday afternoon, is even more shocking than his lawyers suggested in advance. As another former president, Barack Obama, once said, “There’s classified, and there’s classified.” By that measure, many of the documents that Trump took with him from the White House were classified—italicized and boldfaced. In other words, some of these documents—as an official familiar with them told the Washington Post at the time—ranked “among the most sensitive secrets we hold.” The FBI special agent who filed the affidavit wrote that he had “probable cause” to believe that there were more boxes containing more highly classified documents still hidden away at Mar-a-Lago, many in unsecured locations. The indictment quotes tape recordings of conversations proving that Trump knew he had classified documents—he’s showing them to a visitor during the conversation—and that he had no business having them. It galvanized the war cry at that year’s Republican National Convention: “Lock her up!” It also drove him, early on in his presidency, to upgrade at least one law against improper handling of secret information from misdemeanor to felony—karma indeed!