Background Briefing: August 14, 2022
Why Did Trump Take the Top Secret Documents and For What Purpose?
We begin with Trump’s apparent violation of the Espionage Act including USC 793, the possible transmission of classified defense information which is a felony. Joining us is someone familiar with the handling of classified information, Robert Baer, one of the most accomplished agents in CIA history, and a winner of the Career Intelligence Medal. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul For Saudi Crude. He is considered one of the world’s foremost authorities on the Middle East and is an intelligence and national security affairs analyst for CNN. His latest book is The Fourth Man: The Hunt for a KGB Spy at the Top of the CIA and the Rise of Putin’s Russia and we look into the glaring question of why did Trump take the documents and for what purpose other than monetizing secrets and using them for blackmail as well as why has it taken so long for the law to catch up with this career criminal and traitor.
An Investigation Into Reports That Trump Took Nuclear Secrets
Then we assess the reports in the Washington Post that Trump took nuclear secrets with him from the White House and speak with Joseph Cirincione, a national security analyst and author with over 35 years of experience working in Washington, D.C. He is the author or editor of seven books, including Nuclear Nightmares: Securing the World Before It Is Too Late and Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons. He previously served as president of the Ploughshares Fund, and was director for nonproliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, among other positions. He also worked for over nine years on the professional staff of the Armed Services Committee and the Government Operations Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Trump Tries to Blame the “Deep State” For His Treasonous Behavior
Then finally we speak with David Rohde, an executive editor of The New Yorker and a former reporter for Reuters, the New York Times, and the Christian Science Monitor. He won his first Pulitzer Prize for a series in The Christian Science Monitor that helped uncover the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and won his second Pulitzer in 2009 as part of the New York Times team covering Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is also the co-author of A Rope and a Prayer which is about his experience being kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan, and his latest book is In Deep: The F.B.I., the C.I.A., and the Truth about America’s ‘Deep State’. We discuss his most recent articles in the New Yorker, “After the Trump Raid, Silence Is Not an Option for Merrick Garland” and “Exhibit A of Trump’s Recklessness.”