Brunswick Beacon, 09.08.22
That’s the lawsuit Trump filed to stop the Government from examining classified documents it retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. The title perfectly describes the assault on American values Trump will continue if his enablers like Ted Budd and David Rouzer hold office.
You’ve seen the photograph of recovered documents. If a picture is worth a thousand words, that picture is worth a thousand screams. The documents, with giant red letters and wide yellow borders, look like every traffic light you never ran. Cartoonishly-large capital letters shout “TOP SECRET/SCI.”
“Top Secret” means documents whose disclosure would cause “exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” “SCI”, or “Sensitive Compartmented Information” can only be stored, used, or discussed in specially constructed facilities shielded from electronic spying.
Trump kept them in a storage room and desk at his club, Mar-a-Lago. You can book it for weddings. Imagine a Moose Lodge with palm trees.
I’m a retired U.S. Marine Corps Colonel. For the last 19 of my 30 years of service I had a “TOP SECRET/SCI” clearance. I served as security manager of all TS/SCI personnel for II Marine Expeditionary Force, with 42,000 Marines and sailors, garrisoned across the Carolinas. I was its Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence and worked in the USMC Intelligence Department at the Pentagon. Trump’s mishandling of classified information is the worst I’ve ever seen.
As Karl Rove said, “none of these government documents are his.” The FBI executed a lawful search warrant because Trump refused to return them.
Shamefully, Budd and Rouzer supported Trump’s condemnation of the FBI. Predictably, a gunman attacked an FBI field office and was killed. Lindsey Graham predicted riots if Trump is prosecuted, as if Trump is above the law.
On this anniversary of 9/11, America’s soul is under assault. We can either have Trump and his enablers like Budd and Rouzer or the rule of law. We can’t have both.
Eric Terashima
USMCR (retired)
Leland
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