Since last year, Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of investigators and Justice Department attorneys have interviewed an array of officials who served on Donald Trump’s National Security Council, grilling them about specific instances that show the then-president acknowledged proper and legal declassification processes, according to two sources familiar with the situation.
In questioning these NSC veterans and other former Trump administration personnel, the federal investigators appear to have meticulously constructed a roadmap of eyewitness accounts. These accounts, including specific dates and topics of discussion in the White House, include various moments during Trump’s presidency where he is said to have verbally stated he understood that declassifying highly sensitive documents is typically a complex, multi-staged procedure, the two sources say. Some of these accounts include former Trump administration staff recounting times he was briefed on the legal protocols, after having complained to aides that he wanted certain items declassified and released quickly.
The issue of Trump’s knowledge of proper declassification procedures is key to proving the charge of gathering, transmitting or losing defense information outlined in the indictment unsealed on Friday afternoon. Under the section of the Espionage Act Smith used in Friday’s indictment, prosecutors will have to prove that Trump “willfully”— and not just accidentally — retained the classified materials found at his residence.
The testimony of National Security Council veterans demonstrating Trump’s knowledge of and participating in proper, legal declassification measures would buttress the charge that Trump knew the materials were classified, undercutting any attempts to cast their presence at Mar-a-Lago was the result of an ad-hoc declassification process. Early on in the classified documents investigation, Trump’s office claimed that he had a so-called “standing order” to automatically declassify materials taken to the White House residence—an order whose existence Trump has so far failed to prove.
A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The special counsel’s investigators have also asked the former national security staff to walk them through the standard declassification processes during the Trump era, asking if there was any evidence whatsoever of a major change or a “standing order” that Trump previously alleged he secretly had for instant-declassification. Additionally, the special counsel’s office has formed a list of individuals without required security clearances who they believe Trump showed off classified papers to in his post-presidency, two other sources with knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone. Other witnesses, including people who remained in the former president’s orbit following the end of his term in early 2021, have been asked about details regarding Trump’s propensity for brandishing these documents to his club guests, and at times were asked if foreign nationals had seen any of the classified documents in question.
These witness interviews conducted by the Special Counsel’s office added to the work started last year by the FBI, which had been interviewing Trump-era NSC staffers before Smith had even been appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland last November.
The effort to undercut Trump’s potential defenses began early in the FBI’s investigation. As Rolling Stone reported in August of last year, agents began grilling former National Security Council staff about Trump’s claims of a “standing order” to declassify materials taken from the Oval Office just days after the Bureau executed a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago. In February, former Trump national security advisor Robert O’Brien also appeared before the grand jury following a subpoena.
CNN reported Thursday that an unnamed former Trump national security official appeared before the grand jury to testify about the former president’s involvement in previous declassification efforts. The official’s testimony reportedly centered around Trump’s involvement in the effort to declassify a 2018 memo written by Republicans on the the House Intelligence Committee criticizing the investigation into the Russian meddling probe during the Trump administration.
As Rolling Stone reported in September, Trump was also deeply involved in a last-minute effort to declassify documents related to the FBI’s investigation of his campaign in 2016. The effort, spearheaded by chief of staff Mark Meadows in the hours before Joe Biden’s inauguration, saw both Trump and his top aide engaged in a fruitless effort to get the Justice Department to relent on its objections to releasing the information.
But some of the most damning evidence concerning Trump’s awareness that he was violating secrecy rules appears to come from the former president himself.
In the transcript, Trump complains about a New Yorker story which reported that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley had tried to prevent Trump from carrying out a strike on Iran. The former president describes a Defense Department “plan of attack” apparently in front of him and acknowledges that it is “still a secret” and that “as president I could have declassified it.” The comments demonstrate Trump’s apparent awareness that the document remained classified and seems to seriously undercut his claims of a “standing order” which declassified any documents taken from the White House.
In a separate incident, Trump also allegedly showed a staffer at his political action committee a “classified map related to a military operation” and admitted “he should not be showing it to the [staffer].”
Smith also devoted space in the indictment to half-a-dozen public statements in which Trump spoke about the importance of and the need to protect classified information demonstrating the president’s repeated awareness of the need for and laws governing the protection of national defense information.
The statements mostly date from 2016, when Trump was implicitly and explicitly criticizing his campaign rival Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified emails.