Day after day, I keep hearing and seeing media personalities referring to Trump’s “mishandling of classified documents.” That needs to stop. This terminology only serves to minimize the seriousness of Trump’s crimes and to feed the false narrative that what he’s done is no different than the Biden or Clinton cases regarding classified information.
It may be that some of this usage comes from the esoteric legal terminology often used in criminal investigations and prosecutions. If I rent a car and then never return it, perhaps that’s a case of “willful retention” but it’s clear to anyone that I stole the car. That woman from your neighbor’s church who was caught spending donations on a new Lexus and a cruise might be charged with “misappropriation of funds” but you and I understand that she stole the money.
Maybe there is a category of actions related to classified information that collectively would be referred to in government or law as “mishandling” (I’m not an attorney or expert in national security law), but to most people that term is rather vague and squishy. If I lost the title certificate for my car or threw away my bank statement with the junk mail, one might say that I mishandled those documents and they wouldn’t be wrong. This is NOT that. Substantial evidence led a grand jury to conclude that:
Trump took critical national security secrets that he did not have legal authority to possess.
Trump knew that he did not have that authority.
Trump allowed other people (unauthorized people) to see those secrets.
Trump hid those secrets from the government.
When the government searched his home and found those secrets there and asked if he had any more, he lied.
Those actions go way beyond any mishandling. Donald Trump compromised the safety and national security of the United States. That’s why all of this matters. It’s not about failure to follow some obscure government rules about tearing the tags off of mattresses or something. It’s not mail fraud. We’re talking about crimes of the highest order against the United States.
Many separate laws have been broken, and there are several nuances and specifics that might make it challenging to come up with a simple and short few words to use when referring to this case. But the heart of the charges against Trump are simple.
He’s charged with stealing the top nuclear, defense, and intelligence secrets of the United States (and possibly other nations) and sharing them with others. It’s time for the media to say so.
I’ve contacted media organizations (such as NPR) and asked them to change their terminology to more accurately reflect the reality of the charges against Trump, and I encourage everyone here to do the same. Thanks for reading!