The lesson of the missing Russian binder — and the former POTUS who yelled ‘Hoax’

We learned Friday that multiple sources had confirmed to CNN that in the final hours of Donald Trump’s term as president, a 10-inch thick binder of unredacted classified U.S. intelligence on Russia went missing. As far as anyone knows, the highly sensitive material is still in the wind. The intelligence community considered the loss significant enough that, a year later, intelligence officials felt it necessary to brief leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the potential compromise.

The mystery around the binder’s whereabouts is another reminder of the Trump administration’s dangerous disregard for national security.

The mystery around the binder’s whereabouts is yet another reminder of the Trump administration’s dangerous disregard for national security and of the ongoing lack of accountability for the former president’s mishandling of classified documents. The scandal also foretells what we can expect if Trump gets elected.

Trump remains a clear and present danger to the security of our nation for a host of reasons, including his track record on safeguarding America’s secrets. During his tenure, Trump revealed classified data to two top Russian officials visiting the White House. He ignored repeated admonitions to stop using personal, unsecure cellphones that could be easily intercepted by our adversaries. Most infamously, Trump squirreled away over 300 highly classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort where members and their guests attended all manner of events.

Now comes news of the missing binder, described as containing “raw” and “unredacted” classified reporting about Russia, including how that country attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election between Trump and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump ordered the declassification of the intelligence used to justify the FBI opening its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russia’s attempt to help Trump win the election. The binder reportedly reveals intelligence gleaned from secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act intercepts and reporting provided by our NATO allies. Some of the material may not be new, or even particularly sensitive, because certain documents included in the binder were redacted and can be found on the FBI’s website. But significant portions of the binder have never been publicly revealed. That’s because raw, unredacted intelligence reveals the sources and methods, often singular in nature, used to collect it. That means that a lone human source or technical device could be compromised if their reporting falls into the wrong hands.

Here we are, almost three years after Trump left office, and we’ve yet to see the former president held accountable for mishandling and misusing highly classified documents. Yes, he’s been indicted in the Mar-a-Lago case, but that case has been repeatedly delayed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whom Trump appointed.  Judge Cannon claims she’ll rule in March on motions Trump has introduced in his attempt to delay the proceedings, but the very act of waiting until March will result in delayed justice. The documents case is already running about four months behind schedule, and the DOJ has alerted Cannon that Trump is attempting to orchestrate delayed accountability. Many other defendants charged under the Espionage Act are routinely charged and tried in far less time than the Mar-a-Lago prosecution has already lasted.

At a time when accountability is most needed, justice is lacking.

If it hasn’t happened already, the DOJ should open an investigation into the whereabouts of the missing binder.

If it hasn’t happened already, the DOJ should open an investigation into the whereabouts of the missing binder. The binder was not found in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, and there’s no sign that pursuit of the materials was incorporated into that case.

The case of the missing binder is also a clue as to what Trump would likely do with classified information if he’s given access to secret material again. Trump ordered the binder material declassified, and had it relocated to the White House from a locked “safe within a safe” inside the CIA, so he could use national secrets for his own benefit. Specifically, he argued on Twitter that the documents pertained to “the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax,” suggesting that some secrets therein might clear his name and undermine the FBI’s investigation. There’s nothing to indicate he would change his ways in a second term, even if that means helping Russia to help himself.

In response to Trump’s declassification order, some of his aides, including then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone, tried to do the right thing by seeking the Department of Justice’s help in properly declassifying the most sensitive binder components and repeatedly trying to talk Trump out of the release. But Trump kept trying to do the wrong thing by pushing for declassification right up to his last hours in office.

Trump’s then-chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly hand-delivered a redacted copy of the binder to the Department of Justice minutes before Joe Biden was inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2021. In her testimony to the Jan. 6 House committee and in her memoir, Cassidy Hutchinson, who was then an aide to Meadows, says she saw Meadows with the unredacted binder. “I am almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows,” she told the committee.  Trump himself, in an April 2021 interview for a book about his presidency, asserted that his former chief of staff still had the documents. He said, “Meadows has them.”

George J. Terwilliger III, a lawyer for Meadows, strongly denies those claims. “Mark never took any copy of that binder home at any time,” he told The New York Times.

Wherever the binder is, it’s not where it should be. It should be in the National Archives or back in a CIA safe. The longer the sources and methods in those documents remain at large, the more likely it is that they will or already have fallen into the wrong hands.

For a guy who repeatedly mocked the now proven allegations of Russian attempts to aide his campaign, as nothing more than, “Russia, Russia, Russia,” Trump has always seemed hellbent on keeping such allegations alive.

As he runs for the presidency for the third time, the report of the missing binder is a reminder that we must hold Trump and his cohorts accountable for jeopardizing America’s secrets and treating classified data like it’s their personal currency. Eventually, we’ll find some justice — and maybe even the missing binder. Not a week goes by when we aren’t reminded of the risk posed by another Trump term. If he’s elected again, he’ll ensure there won’t be any Pat Cipollones or Cassidy Hutchinsons around him to try and mitigate the risk or tell us what’s happening. Folks like that will be conspicuous by their absence — just like the binder.

Frank Figliuzzi

Frank Figliuzzi is an MSNBC columnist and a national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC. He was the assistant director for counterintelligence at the FBI, where he served 25 years as a special agent and directed all espionage investigations across the government. He is the author of “The FBI Way: Inside the Bureau’s Code of Excellence.”

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