Two weeks after Election Day, the idea of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to power is quickly shifting from theoretical to practical. The gears of transition are turning as the federal system begins to prepare to return power to him. And while his parade of Cabinet choices is distressing, much more concerning are reports that Trump has now begun receiving intelligence briefings again.
On one level, this is exactly what is supposed to happen: An incoming president is brought up to speed on the challenges and threats the nation faces. But on another, it is troubling to see such steps taking place for a man who has been indicted on allegations he mishandled classified information. It is a pantomime of normalcy that speaks to how woefully unprepared our institutions remain to limit Trump’s excesses, almost four years after he first left office.
It is a pantomime of normalcy that speaks to how woefully unprepared our institutions remain to limit Trump’s excesses
NBC News reported on Tuesday that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had begun providing Trump with the briefings that have been given to presidents-elect for over 70 years. (The Washington Post first reported that the briefings are taking place.) But there’s no statutory requirement that Trump be given early access to the country’s most closely guarded secrets. It could more accurately be described as a courtesy from the ODNI.The decision looks especially odd considering the Justice Department’s Mar-a-Lago documents case against Trump. When he left office in 2021, Trump took with him boxes and boxes of papers that should have been handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration for preservation. Instead, he refused to do so when asked, allegedly going so far as to attempt to obstruct a subpoena for him to turn over all the presidential documents in his possession.
According to the indictment that special counsel Jack Smith obtained, Trump wasn’t exactly careful with those documents he kept. Now-infamous photos showed a small mountain of boxes stuffed into one of the estate’s bathrooms. The lack of care meant that classified documents were probably among the contents. Worse, an audio recording of a meeting at Trump’s Bedminster estate in New Jersey included the former president showing off a sensitive map that he said was related to potential military plans against Iran.U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ruled in June that Smith had to drop the charge related to the Bedminster incident from his case. (She fully dismissed the case the next month based on a truly wild reading of the Constitution’s Appointments Clause.) But even without that specific incident among the charges against him, Trump’s lax regard for secrecy was a pattern that will almost certainly repeat itself in his upcoming term.
We all saw how he operated regarding top-secret information during his presidency. He posted a satellite image of an Iranian rocket launch pad on Twitter, now known as X. He shared Israeli intelligence with Russian diplomats during their visit to the White House in 2017. In each instance, Trump insisted that he was well within his right to do so — and he technically had a point, regardless of the wisdom of his actions.
Much of our current system of government is built on a notion of competency and decency that Trump fundamentally subverts.
Trump’s lawyers claimed in the Mar-a-Lago case that he’d supposedly declassified all the documents with him before leaving office. There’s no evidence of that at all. But it did touch on a reality that is back in play now that Trump will be back in the White House. The president sits at the top of the classification chain, which was established via executive order, not an act of Congress. With that comes the power to classify or declassify whatever he wants, an authority he then delegates out to the other parts of the executive branch.Presidents have derived this ability from their constitutional duty to defend the country from adversaries, both foreign and domestic. But Congress has imposed other restrictions on the office in the past.
Moreover, Democrats had the opportunity after President Joe Biden’s election to codify into law many of the norms that Trump had previously flouted. But the window closed on that moment without any new guardrails being erected to prevent the abuses of office that the Supreme Court has now effectively greenlit.
As we saw in his first term, much of our current system of government is built on a notion of competency and decency that Trump fundamentally subverts. The failure to hold him accountable in the interregnum between his terms guaranteed no new limits to the scope of power he’ll hold in January. For Trump to now be receiving classified briefings before being sworn in is a testament to how the system is prepared to bend toward his authority, even as he has done nothing to show any newfound responsibility toward the power he’ll hold.