On January 19, 2021, his last full day in office, then-president Donald Trump signed a memorandum ordering the declassification of “a binder of materials” containing raw Russian intelligence and various reports so highly-classified it was kept in a safe inside a vault at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.
That 10-inch deep binder has been missing since Trump left the White House, according to a detailed CNN report which reveals the existence of the binder for the first time, outside of a memoir by Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.
“The binder contained raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN,” the news network reported Friday. Its disappearance has been “raising alarms among intelligence officials that some of the most closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.”
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“The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office,” CNN’s report continues. “The former president had ordered it brought there so he could declassify a host of documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. Under the care of then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the binder was scoured by Republican aides working to redact the most sensitive information so it could be declassified and released publicly.”
In his memorandum, Trump states that he ordered the binder brought to the White House.
“At my request, on December 30, 2020, the Department of Justice provided the White House with a binder of materials related to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation,” the memo states.
“Portions of the documents in the binder have remained classified and have not been released to the Congress or the public,” Trump continued. “I requested the documents so that a declassification review could be performed and so I could determine to what extent materials in the binder should be released in unclassified form.”
Under Crossfire Hurricane, the Bureau investigated the links between Donald Trump, the Trump campaign, and Russia, and whether the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia’s efforts to attack the U.S. election process to help Trump get elected. Special Counsel Robert Mueller took over the investigation in what the nation later learned was a highly-controlled effort that Trump “tried to seize control of … and force Mueller’s removal.”
Trump’s top and most loyal advisors, including Attorney General Bill Barr, tried to stop Trump from declassifying the binder, which Trump believed exonerated him from allegations Russia had helped him win the 2016 election, allegations proven by the Mueller investigation and by a Senate Republican-majority Intelligence Committee investigation.
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Copies of the binder were made, to hasten the DOJ’s work to redact its declassified contents as necessary for national security so it could be released.
Cassidy Hutchinson, whose testimony before the nation during a primetime televised hearing of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack’s riveted the nation, “testified to Congress and wrote in her memoir that she believes Meadows took home an unredacted version of the binder. She said it had been kept in Meadows’ safe and that she saw him leave with it from the White House,” according to CNN.
“’I am almost positive it went home with Mr. Meadows,’ Hutchinson told the January 6 committee in closed-door testimony, according to transcripts released last year.”
“A lawyer for Meadows,” CNN adds, “however, strongly denies that Meadows mishandled any classified information at the White House, saying any suggestion Meadows was responsible for classified information going missing was ‘flat wrong.'”
Read the entire CNN report here.
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