CNN broke bombshell reporting in the early hours of this morning, publishing a damning audio recording that hears disgraced former US President Donald J. Trump openly sharing top-secret, highly-classified government documents that he stole from the White House with biographers during a July 2021 meeting at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club.
In the damning recording, Donald Trump is heard admitting that he was holding a classified Pentagon document containing intel about a potential US attack against Iran that he stole from the White House upon the end of his presidency.
“These are the papers,” the ex-president is heard saying in the audio recording released by CNN, referencing what he indicated was a Pentagon document containing secret intel containing attack plans, while actively discussing those classified, confidential attack plans with biographers.
The former president can be heard cracking jokes and laughing with his aides, talking about former Sec. and 2016 opponent Hilary Clinton, as Trump declared that he would “lock her up” for having classified intel on her home email server.
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“Hillary would print that out all the time, you know. Her private emails,” a Trump staffer can be heard saying at one point in the recording.
Now, former director of the CIA and the NSA Michael Hayden has publicly spoken out and all but confirmed our worst fears — it’s all but guaranteed that foreign adversaries now have access to this nation’s most crucial national security intel.
Hayden’s assessment came in a video produced by The Republican Accountability Project, featuring comments, remarks, and reactions from a group of Republican individuals who are willing to openly speak out against the national security risk that is Donald J. Trump.
“The president is supposed to keep our secrets secure, not show our secrets off,” the former CIA and NSA director says in the blistering new video.
Hayden has been out of the spotlight since 2018, after suffering a stroke that altered the course of his life, but the former director noted that this issue is far too severe, with far too detrimental implications, for even him to remain silent.
“Donald Trump has been indicted. He mishandled classified information,” Hayden said. “He had many top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago for more than a year. We don’t know who saw them, but we have to assume those documents were compromised. And we have to assume that our enemies know about them.”
Citing his own 4 decades of experience in intelligence, Hayden made it clear that he has never seen anything like what Donald Trump has done.
“Trump must face consequences for his actions,” the former intelligence community official said. “The consequences will be really important.”
See the powerful clip here:
Watch former NSA and CIA director General Michael Hayden speak out against Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. pic.twitter.com/YAOFTX1Nx0
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) June 27, 2023
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0