Former Acting CIA Director Bashes Trump Team’s ‘Sloppiness,’ Warns Mar-a-Lago Docs ‘Were Vulnerable’

Former acting and Deputy CIA Director Michael Morell warned that the classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago were “vulnerable” with the sloppy handling they had from former President Donald Trump’s team.

Morell spoke to CBS’s Major Garrett on Sunday for Face The Nation, where they discussed the release of the heavily-redacted affidavit used to authorize the FBI’s search warrant at Trump’s estate. Morell began his analysis by noting that classified documents were mixed with unclassified documents in the boxes of material the FBI retrieved.

“That suggested to me a sloppiness in the handling of classified documents at the White House. The two White Houses that I know best, the Bush White House and the Obama White House, there were very rigorous and strict protocols with regard to the handling of classified information, where it was, records were kept, retrievals were made. That’s what normally happens. That didn’t happen in this case, it sounds to me.”

Breaking down the classification markings on the documents, Morell noted that “the most sensitive material of the U.S. intelligence community” was included in the documents found at Mar-a-Lago. This prompted Garrett to ask “how vulnerable to compromise were the documents you were just talking about and were outlined in this affidavit?”

Morell’s answer:

I think they were vulnerable even at the White House, since they seem to have been mishandled at the White House as well, right? We have to look at that as well as Mar-a-Lago. And as the damage assessment goes forward, I think they need to look at both of those places. Not everyone at the White House has a top secret clearance. So you have to worry about who had access to those documents, who didn’t have clearance to do so.

In terms of the vulnerability from foreign intelligence services, a little context. If you look back at the history of espionage in the United States, you’ll see a number of Americans who were charged and convicted of espionage. And when you look at how long they spied before they were caught and you do all of that math, what you learn is that at any given moment in time, there are — on average — four Americans spying for foreign intelligence services without us knowing it at the time. And those are the ones we ultimately caught.

So there’s a lot of spying going on in Washington, right? And if you’re a foreign intelligence service and you want to target the United States government, what’s the number one place you want to target? The White House.

The discussion went on as Morell explained that people can be accused of mishandling classified information if documents are taken outside of sensitive compartmented information locations (SCIFS).

Watch above, via CBS.