The entire multiyear, still ongoing effort by Donald Trump and Republicans to smear Hillary Clinton is based on how a handful of classified documents were handled as they passed through her email. There’s no evidence that any of those emails, not a single document, was ever stolen or otherwise circulated outside of regular channels. But the same can’t be said of the Trump White House. Not only have multiple officials continued to use unprotected personal accounts in handling official documents; not only has Trump repeatedly overruled security officials to hand out security clearance like candy; not only has Jared Kushner delivered confidential information in exchange for personal favors; but Trump has also insisted on using his personal cellphone for official communications. He’s done so even when those communications are being made to areas where the communications network is known to be compromised. Such as in Ukraine.
One of the most consistent features of the Ukraine scandal has been Trump on the phone with people filling him in on the progress of his extortion scheme. And whether it was screaming at Gordon Sondland in a Kyiv restaurant, or getting the latest from Rudy Giuliani on efforts to smear an ambassador, Trump seems to have conducted a lot of these calls via very, very not-secure cellphones. As The Washington Post reports, phone records released as part of the impeachment inquiry only reinforce the casual attitude Trump took toward systems that are known to be monitored by Russian agents, among others.
Trump both made and received calls that did not come over encrypted lines or follow any other guidelines for protecting security, which means not only that Ukraine was aware that he was withholding military assistance over demands that it help in his schemes to smear opponents—which it absolutely was—but that Russia also knew about it. One more time: As Trump was talking to Giuliani about his scheme to extort Ukraine, a scheme that meant delaying the assistance it wanted and damaging its relationship with the United States, he did so in a way that invited Russia to listen in.
But … does it really matter at this point? As his recent jaunt to Europe demonstrated, Trump is a laughingstock among leaders of other nations. As his actions in Syria demonstrated, Trump doesn’t give a damn about commitments to allies. And as Giuliani’s current actions in Ukraine demonstrate, Trump is done with secret plots to get foreign governments to smear political rivals—he’s just doing it in the open. Are there any secrets still worth protecting?
At multiple points in the defense of Trump, Republicans—specifically Devin Nunes—made it clear that they didn’t regard the release of classified information as even a road bump in efforts to defend Trump. Hell, Nunes went ahead with publishing information that directly threatened U.S. assets and fieldcraft, even after the heads of both the CIA and the FBI came to Congress to ask that he hold back. Defending Trump trumps everything—sorry about that, formerly living agents.
And it’s not as if Russia really needs to listen in to Trump’s calls to see where he’s going. Coming out of his 2018 meeting with Trump in Helsinki, Vladimir Putin announced exactly what was going to happen in Ukraine months before Trump got on the phone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to tell him to work it out with Putin. It’s hard to protect secrets from the people who are generating them.
The Washington Post considers the disclosure of Trump’s continued defiance of security measures to be “remarkable given Trump’s attacks on Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.” But it’s only remarkable if those attacks on Clinton were made out of genuine concern over security. Which they definitely, definitely were not.