Donald Trump may have just leaked classified information during his Twitter rant
Donald Trump’s obsessive and unhinged attacks on the media have finally come to a vaguely ironic head. Trump has long decried major news outlets for using inside sources to report on his scandals, often falsely asserting that these insider details are classified. But during a particularly Trumpian rant against the Washington Post, tonight, Donald Trump appears to have leaked classified information about a secret U.S. military program in mid-tweet.
Trump’s laser focused attack on the Washington Post, in which he attacked the respected newspaper for several of its stories on him, strongly hints that he knows the Washington Post is about to publish a major bombshell. But he created a whole new scandal with one of his tweets, which read like this: “The Amazon Washington Post fabricated the facts on my ending massive, dangerous, and wasteful payments to Syrian rebels fighting Assad.” Unless Trump is lying about the program and it doesn’t really exist, he just leaked classified intel by talking about it.
The president does have the right to declassify any information which he sees fit. But he’s supposed to issue a memo formally declassifying that information before revealing it. So, depending on which legal expert you ask, Trump’s twitter outburst can still arguably be classified as a crime. In any case, expert consensus is that he did in fact leak classified intel with his tweet.
For instance, former CIA agent Ned Price tweeted that “If the media reports are true, the President of the United States just confirmed a CIA covert action program. On Twitter.” New York Times national security editor Amy Fiscus tweeted that “This program is still classified.” This comes after Donald Trump leaked Israeli classified intel to the Russian government during an Oval Office meeting. Trump is also suspected of giving Vladimir Putin classified intel during their unofficial second meeting at the G20 summit.
