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THE GAPING HOLE IN OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE TRUMP DOCUMENTS. There have been several new reports about the number and the sensitivity of documents seized in the Aug. 8 FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, the winter home of former President Donald Trump. If true, the reports add to the body of knowledge about the matter. But they don't answer the most important question of the whole affair: What are the documents about? The New York Times reported this week that the government "has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings" from Trump in the 19 months since he left office. It appears most were recovered before the Mar-a-Lago raid, which netted an undisclosed number of additional documents. Now, the Washington Post reports that "some material" taken in the Aug. 8 search "is considered extraordinarily sensitive." Sourcing the story to "two people familiar with the search," the Washington Post said the material is so sensitive "because it could reveal carefully guarded secrets about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods." One of the two people "familiar with the search" told the Washington Post that the information is "among the most sensitive secrets we hold." The use of "we" suggests that the source was in the government. Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what's going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue! A side note: Two weeks ago, the Washington Post set off a firestorm of speculation when it reported that "classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought" in the Mar-a-Lago raid. The paper continued: "Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands." Reaction in the punditocracy was explosive. The use of the word "nuclear" quickly drove the story to another level. Wild speculation ensued. Trump stole nuclear secrets! "Two words for you, my friend," MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said. "Two words: nuclear secrets." In an unusual development, or nondevelopment, other top news outlets did not replicate the Washington Post's reporting. Whatever mention they made of Trump and nuclear weapons credited the Washington Post. And then the Washington Post itself seemed to go silent on the "nuclear" angle. When the paper reported on just how "extraordinarily sensitive" the documents were — "among the most sensitive secrets we hold" — the words "nuclear weapons" did not appear in the article. Still, the reports said, the documents are plenty sensitive. Really, really sensitive. Super sensitive. The reporting and commentary stress just how important the classified information collected at Mar-a-Lago is. But none of it answers the question: What is it? Even the Washington Post report on "nuclear weapons" said repeatedly that FBI agents were looking for such documents. It never said agents actually found nuclear-related documents. The paper specifically said its sources did not "say if such documents were recovered as part of the search." And the New York Times later reported, not in the context of nuclear weapons but about the general classified status of the documents, "The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear." There it is. The story we're all hearing is: This is huge, but we can't tell you what it is, exactly. Many Republicans are inclined to be skeptical. First, they don't trust some of the big news outlets. But more importantly, they have experience with fights over classified information in which the classified information at issue did not turn out to be as critically sensitive as advertised. In particular, they remember the "Nunes memo." In 2018, then-Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who at the time was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sought information about the early days of the Trump-Russia investigation. He specifically wanted to know what the FBI, Justice Department, and intelligence community had done to target candidate Trump in the 2016 presidential campaign. Nunes suspected FBI misconduct. Specifically, he suspected the FBI used the Steele dossier, which was the collection of false and outrageous allegations against Trump created by a former British spy in the pay of the Hillary Clinton campaign, to win a secret wiretapping warrant against Carter Page, a low-level former Trump campaign aide. Nunes's suspicions were correct. But the information proving Nunes right was classified. As he fought to have it declassified, a move that would require Trump's order, some in law enforcement, as well as Democrats in Congress, warned that declassification would reveal sensitive secrets, the zealously guarded sources and methods of intelligence agencies, and possibly do grave damage to national security. At the end of January 2018, shortly before the material was made public, top Democrats warned that releasing the information would cause great harm to the United States. One CNN commentator said: "Depending on the classification level of the document — whether SECRET or TOP SECRET — if released in an unauthorized fashion, it could cause either 'serious damage' or 'exceptionally grave damage' to the national security of the United States.'" And then the FBI itself issued an extraordinary public warning to Trump and Nunes not to declassify the material. This is how the Los Angeles Times reported it: "FBI leaders have clashed with presidents in the past, but usually behind closed doors. Historians struggled to find a precedent for the bureau's public challenge to the White House. 'It's like a neon billboard blinking, 'Danger, don't you dare do this,'' said Douglas Brinkley, a Rice University professor who studies the presidency. 'This is a sign of war.'" Later, we learned that the FBI was waging "war" mainly for the purpose of concealing its own improper actions. The Nunes memo was made public, voters learned more about what the FBI had done, and there was no grave damage to national security. So now we are hearing sober speculation about the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. If they're that highly classified, the pundits say, they must be extremely, extremely sensitive — "among the most sensitive secrets we hold." Maybe they are. Perhaps the situation is every bit as serious as the leakers and commentators are telling us. But maybe they are not. Maybe the situation will, in the end, bear more resemblance to the Nunes memo brouhaha than the Rosenberg case. So far, the only specific documents mentioned in relation to the story, documents Trump is known to have valued and vowed to keep, are the original copies of the weird letters North Korea's Kim Jong Un wrote to Trump and the traditional outgoing-president-to-incoming-president note Barack Obama left for Trump on Trump's Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2017. Perhaps Trump violated the Presidential Records Act by hanging on to them — according to the New York Times, he told people that the documents were "mine" — but it seems unlikely they rank among the country's most closely guarded national security secrets. In the end, the problem is what it has been from the beginning. There is a bitter public debate raging over documents, and nobody in the public knows what the documents are. What sense does that make? For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.
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