There’s a heated argument now between people who say Trump was only planning to sell top secret documents— which would bring a 10 year prison term (although 20 years if he was also obstructing the investigation)— and those who are certain he had already sold some top secret documents (which could bring what he has long deserved: the death penalty).
Trump stole some of the most secret documents he could get his paws on, including documents with the names of CIA assets in other countries. There have long been suspicions that Trump had been feeding those names to other governments. If it turns out to be true, would you support my contention that Trump should be executed, no matter how weepy and angry the MAGAts get? Let’s go back to a New York Times report from almost a full year ago— October, 2021: Captured, Killed or Compromised: C.I.A. Admits to Losing Dozens of Informants. Trump was already gone from the White House— along with a few dozen of the boxes of top secret documents he had stolen— when Julian Barnes and Adam Goldman wrote that “Top American counterintelligence officials warned every CIA station and base around the world last week about troubling numbers of informants recruited from other countries to spy for the United States being captured or killed, people familiar with the matter said… The cable highlighted the struggle the spy agency is having as it works to recruit spies around the world in difficult operating environments. In recent years, adversarial intelligence services in countries such as Russia, China, Iran and Pakistan have been hunting down the CIA’s sources and in some cases turning them into double agents.”
Barnes and Goldman cited every possible reason for the problem other than the most obvious one: Trump was selling out the country. “While the memo identified numbers of informants that were arrested or killed,” they wrote, “it said the number turned against the United States was not fully known. Sometimes, informants who are discovered by adversarial intelligence services are not arrested, but instead are turned into double agents who feed disinformation to the CIA, which can have devastating effects on intelligence collection and analysis. Pakistanis have been particularly effective in this sphere, former officials said… A breach of the classified communications system, or ‘covcom,’ used by the CIA helped helped to expose the agency’s networks in China and in Iran, according to former officials. In both cases informants were executed. Others had to be extracted and resettled by the agency. In Iran and China, some intelligence officials believe that Americans provided information to the adversarial agencies that could have helped expose informants.” They don’t mention Trump as one of the sources. But last week, someone who knows Trump better than most, David Cay Johnston, did: Evidence Suggests Trump Tried to Sell Out America for Profit. His extensive knowledge of Trump led him to write that the document thief is “a con artist, a know-nothing without even rudimentary knowledge of nuclear weaponry (the subject of Barack Obama’s senior college thesis) or national security. What Trump does know is this: Foreign governments whose dictatorial leaders he admires— North Korea, Russia and Saudi Arabia among them–would pay fortunes to acquire America’s most sensitive nuclear secrets. And what Donald knows is how to find buyers who will pay premium prices for whatever he has to unload. What had been the unthinkable idea that any American president would sell our national security secrets is suddenly front and center. From private citizen Trump’s Florida home the FBI recovered extensive national security materials belonging to our government. No previous American president has been the subject of a criminal investigation, much less one that raises the question of disloyalty for profit.”
As Russia-1 announcer, Evgeny Popov, told his Russian audience after the FBI seized the stolen documents still at Mar-a-Lago, “if there were any important documents, they've been studying them in Moscow for a while.” As David Morris reported this morning, “Is it so unthinkable that the despot and money-loving head of Trump University, developer of the Big Lie and main instigator of the January 6th attack on the Capitol would trade valuable secrets for cold cash. Or perhaps a promise of future favors? Also, let’s not forget all the money Trump and his companies have received from Russians over the years— often at critical times when U.S. banks wouldn’t touch him with a ten-foot pole. And how about the support his 2016 candidacy received from Kremlin related entities (see the real Mueller Report, not the Bill Barr pseudo-summary)? Is it beyond the pale to wonder if the passing on of critical information could have been some sort of quid-pro-quo payment for services rendered? Or could it have been for revenge? Petulant revenge against the American people for not returning him to the office he seems to think is his— and his alone. Don’t for a minute think that in the bottom of his heart, Trump doesn’t know as well as anyone that he lost. That a large majority of the American people want no part of him. Can’t you just hear him thinking, ‘If I’m going down, America, I’m taking you down with me!’ That would certainly be a Trumpy sort of thing to do. According to David Corn, Trump has always been obsessed with getting even with anybody who crosses him.”
The sad truth is that whatever the reality might be, the FBI, CIA, NSA, Dept. of Defense, etc. now have no choice but to work on the worst-case assumption that all of the information contained within the stolen documents has been compromised.
People who have worked for us might die.
Our next generation weapons systems might already be obsolete.
Our most-effective intelligence-gathering techniques might no longer work.
Foreign spies in the U.S. might have been warned that we are on to them.
An in-depth damage assessment is desperately needed.
Now!
Not just for this fiasco, but for the four long years Comrade Trump was in the White House, and every minute since he left.
The harm this evil man has done to America is incalculable.
Their countries were better off when Charles I of England, Louis the XVI of France, Tsar Nicholas II, Faisal II of Iraq, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Hendrik Verwoerd of South Africa, Nicolae Ceaușescu of Romania, Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were executed. Ours will be better off if Trump is executed before he dies of natural causes.
