According to court documents released on Friday, US federal police seized documents marked as “top secret” during their search of the home of former President Donald Trump on Monday.
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Previous episodes recall that the Republican billionaire sometimes handled or used confidential information with a degree of ease when he was in power.
His powers as president allowed him to make sole decisions about the release of certain confidential information. But some of his decisions have stunned the intelligence community, to say the least.
A tweeted image
On August 30, 2019, Donald Trump tweeted what appeared to be a high-resolution photo of a missile or missile launch pad in Iran. After meeting his secret services, he confirmed that he took the photo.
shared information
On May 10, 2017, the President received Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergei Kisliak at the White House.
He reveals to them detailed information from a third country in the Middle East about the attack possibilities of the organization Islamic State (IS).
But these highly protected elements actually came from Israel, deeply irritated that this information was leaked to the Russians.
A secret revealed
In an April 2017 phone call, Donald Trump told his Philippine counterpart Rodrigo Duterte that two American nuclear-powered submarines were sailing off the North Korean coast, carrying “a huge force,” according to the presidency.
The location of nuclear submarines, central elements of America’s nuclear deterrent, is a closely guarded Pentagon secret.
A nuclear tool revealed
In a 2019 interview with American star journalist Bob Woodward, Donald Trump mentioned the existence of a secret American nuclear tool.
“I built a weapon system, a nuclear thing, that nobody in this country had before,” he said. “We have something that Putin or Xi have never heard of.”
Too many details
When the death of the leader of the Islamic State (IS) organization Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was revealed during an American raid in October 2019, the American President gave many details – number of helicopters involved, commandos entering the building. previous spying via ISIS phones and internet – usually kept secret by the Pentagon.
This information could allow opponents of the United States to better understand how its army operates, former special forces commander Michael Nagata estimated for Politico.
A misinformed environment
Finally, Donald Trump didn’t seem to tell his spy bosses everything.
In July 2018, intelligence chief Dan Coats seemed surprised when he was told at a conference that the White House was inviting Vladimir Putin, with whom Mr Trump had just spoken in Helsinki, to Washington.
“We’re sorry?” he had said.
Mr Coats also admitted to being left in the dark about the content of the Heads of State meeting in Finland. “I don’t know what happened at that meeting,” he said three days after the interview.