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When you are at war with the truth, you attack the truth tellers. When you are a threat to U.S. national security, you attack those who seek to defend it. When you are conscious of your own guilt, you target those who can confirm your crimes.
These are the reasons that Donald Trump has been engaged in a one-man war against the U.S. intelligence since even before he became president. These are the reasons we must see Trump’s theft of vital national secrets as more than just a story about documents.
The seizure of documents at Mar-a-Lago—and what we have learned about the former president’s apparent violation of federal laws by keeping them, mishandling them, and obstructing the efforts to return them—must not be seen as an isolated incident. Trump’s disregard for U.S. national security and in particular his contempt for and struggle with the U.S. intelligence community, has been a theme since he first publicly sought the support of an American enemy to help him win the 2016 presidential campaign.