Trump Refused To Turn Over Classified Documents Because He Wanted To Use Them As ‘Leverage’: Report

A former FBI agent says he thinks former president Donald Trump kept thousands of classified and top secret documents because he had plans to use them as “leverage” over others.

Peter Strzok, who served in the FBI for 22 years, including as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, was asked by MSNBC host Tiffany Cross:

“We know he shares because this guy almost tweeted out major secrets. I want to direct your attention to the Iran missile tweet … there was an image of the Iranian missile blowup, and it was exquisite intelligence, this is all according to a former official. And when they showed it to the president he said I’m tweeting it. And they essentially said, sir, we don’t want to do it because people will understand our capabilities. His response was, I’m the president, I can declassify anything. That blows my mind, and I do wonder what exactly was Merrick Garland mulling over, because we’ve seen how he’s been a threat to us for four years?”

Strzok replied:

“The president has the authority to classify and declassify things while he’s in office, and what’s critical, he’s no longer in office. He was not in office immediately following the inauguration on January 20th, so what you have to do is go back and look, and the biggest question in my mind is why did he have all the information? In the run-up you show former National Security Adviser John Bolton saying he thought it might be neat. In my mind, I would not be surprised, one, not just the material that the FBI recovered in the search warrant but those 15 boxes that the National Archives got much earlier in the year.”

And then Strzok explained why he thinks Trump wanted to keep such highly sensitive information lying around unsecured at Mar-a-Lago:

“I think there’s going to be turn out to be, one, highly, highly classified information, but, two, things that aren’t just things he found neat. I would be surprised if there weren’t things that furthered his business interest, things he could use as leverage over people, things he could use to settle the scores. The biggest question in my mind is why on earth, having been told repeatedly by so many people, that he steadfastly refused to turn these things over and instead carried them all away. You know, I hope DOJ is content now with the FBI that they have recovered everything, but we’re talking about a massive amount of information.”

Greed and revenge. We all know that Trump is rapacious and petty, constantly looking for ways to enrich himself and get payback on others, even at the expense of U.S. national security. He needs to be indicted and tried. If he isn’t, this country will never be safe.