Some classified U.S. intelligence documents related to Israel and a potential strike on Iran appeared online in recent days, and while officials in Israel have said the disclosure isn’t likely to have a meaningful practical impact, it’s nevertheless a problem when information like this is divulged. The FBI, not surprisingly, has launched an investigation.
At first blush, there’s no obvious reason why this controversy would intersect with the American presidential election, though Donald Trump apparently sees some electoral value in the story anyway.
Hours before the FBI announced its probe, the Republican former president published an odd item to his social media platform, declaring:
U.S. leaked highly confidential Documents from Israel. May have come from Defense Department. Israel has been seriously damaged and compromised by this. Wartime strategy and data. Probably came from Defense Department. MUST FIND THE LEAKER! Israel no longer wants to share documents with U.S., and who can blame them!
Note how the GOP candidate went from saying the information “may have come” from the Pentagon to “probably came from” the Pentagon over the course of a few sentences.
Later in the day, Trump also claimed — without a shred of evidence, of course — that it was an “enemy from within” who leaked the intelligence documents.
Part of the problem is that the Republican nominee has no idea what he’s talking about: He has no idea who or what was responsible for the disclosure, but that hasn’t stopped him from just popping off irresponsibly with baseless speculation.
Another part of the problem is that Trump keeps referencing a “leak” that might not have been a leak: As The Washington Post reported, “White House officials have said it has not been determined yet whether the documents were leaked or hacked.”
But even if we put these relevant details aside, does the former president really want to talk about the United States sharing highly confidential information from Israel? Because we can have that conversation, though Trump might not like where it ends up.
In 2017, just four months into his presidency, the Republican welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak into the Oval Office — at the request of Russia’s Vladimir Putin — for a visit that was never fully explained.
As part of the get-together, Trump reportedly revealed highly classified information to his Russian guests for reasons that have never been explained.
“This is code-word information,” a U.S. official told The Washington Post at the time. The then-president “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”
NBC News reported soon after the classified information that Trump shared with Russia for reasons unknown came by way of … wait for it … Israel. Seven years later, the former president was nevertheless online, writing: “U.S. leaked highly confidential Documents from Israel. … Israel no longer wants to share documents with U.S., and who can blame them!” Self-awareness is not among this guy’s strengths: Those who leak information from Israel shouldn’t complain about someone allegedly leaking information from Israel. At least for now, Trump, who has a remarkable record of revealing national security secrets for reasons that haven’t been explained, is no longer in a position to disclose classified information to the public — in part because President Joe Biden cut off his access, and in part because he’s refusing to get the intelligence briefings he’s entitled to as a major-party nominee. The former president said that if he received the sensitive information, he might be accused of leaking, so he’d rather remain in the dark. Given his extensive history of leaking, that made sense, though if he wins in two weeks, Trump will regain access to the nation’s secrets, which he’ll then be able to start divulging again.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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