Elizabeth Neumann, former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary for counterterrorism, warned on Sunday about the consequences of mishandling classified documents.
"I found the indictment to be a really vivid picture for the American public of what the national security community dealt with for four years when he was president," Neumann, who served during the Trump administration, said while making an appearance on ABC News' This Week. Neumann was speaking about Trump who was indicted by a grand jury on Thursday for the way he handled hundreds of classified documents that were seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate last August after he took them from the White House when he left office.
Special counsel Jack Smith, appointed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to oversee the case, said on Friday that Trump is facing charges related to violations of the country's national security laws and conspiracy to obstruct justice. The former president has denied any wrongdoing and continues to maintain his innocence. He also previously said that he declassified the documents before taking them.
The federal grand jury indicted Trump on a total of 37 counts, including 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information, making Trump the first former president to face federal criminal charges in United States history.
Former DHS Assistant Sec. for Counterterrorism Elizabeth Neumann tells @GStephanopoulos that Trump indictment paints a “vivid picture for the American public of what the national security community dealt with for four years when he was president.” https://t.co/PJkPNL9usJ pic.twitter.com/NkZHm2pTY1
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) June 11, 2023
Neumann added on Sunday that not protecting the country's "most sensitive secrets" means failing to protect American lives because military and intelligence personnel would then be put at risk as a result, as well as the information about the U.S.'s foreign allies.
"He had a blatant disregard. Just didn't care to follow the rules," she said of Trump's actions when she served during his administration.
The unsealed indictment was released on Friday, revealing the various locations where Trump kept the documents, including a bathroom, a ballroom, his bedroom, and in an office space. With the documents scattered across Mar-a-Lago, tens of thousands of people could have had access to them, according to the indictment.
"If you're a foreign intelligence agency, you know that Mar-a-Lago is a great target and you're probably trying to figure out what may be there," Neumann said. "...Hopefully we're finding out what might have been leaked, but this causes people to die. This is a very serious top secret [and] special access program. When they fall into the wrong hands, people die and the United States' security is deeply compromised."
Trump's former attorney Timothy Parlatore told Newsweek on Saturday that while his former client is currently facing over 30 counts of charges, he wasn't charged over the vast majority of the documents that were returned in response to the subpoena issued in May 2022 or those taken during the FBI raid. He said that could be either because those documents are too sensitive that they would have to be declassified to use in court or because they don't constitute national defense information.
"There are parts of this indictment that I look at and I say that if they [prosecutors] have evidence to back that up, then that's really bad for Trump," Parlatore added.
Meanwhile, Trump is scheduled for arraignment on Tuesday in Miami.
Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office for comment.
