Former Sec of Defense: Classified Document Investigation Confirms Trump is ‘Clear and Present Threat to Democracy’
How big of a security risk is former President Donald Trump following multiple reports of purloined classified documents reportedly seized at Mar-a-Lago? According to former Defense Secretary William Cohen, he is a “clear and present threat to democracy.”
Cohen appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe following a new Washington Post report that among the 11,000 or so documents retrieved by the FBI from Trump’s Palm Beach manse were highly classified documents revealing the nuclear capabilities of an unnamed country Citing sources close to the documents, Post reporters Devlin Barrett and Carol Leonnig reported:
A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.
Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.
Cohen is a life-long Republican who served as Defense Secretary under the Clinton administration and was asked by co-host Willie Geist what to make of the recent report. “I think the Justice Department is going about it very methodically and very differentially,” Cohen said. “I think that time has come to an end.”
The former Defense Secretary then cited the January 6th hearing testimony of conservative judge Michael Luttig, who spoke of Trump’s “treacherous” plan to steal democracy, among other things.
“We go back to the January 6th committee, where Judge Luttig — a very conservative judge — said that Donald Trump is a ‘clear and present threat to democracy,'” Cohen added. “That’s been confirmed over and over. The notion that the former president had documents, highly classified documents, in his possession and in unsafe circumstances, or any circumstances, puts our nation at risk, potentially. So, I think there’s no justification. There’s no way they can say, ‘oh, it’s a mistake.’ I think that’s been disproved, and anyone who says that is flat-out lying.”
Watch above via MSNBC.
