EXCLUSIVE: FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP LEAKED CLASSIFIED RUSSIA PAPERS TO CONSERVATIVE JOURNALIST

Trump's leak of the records raises new questions regarding his handling of classified information as the special counsel's probe of Trump's removal of classified documents to Mar-a-Lago intensifies.

Credit...Department of Justice

In the closing days of his presidency— as President Donald J. Trump was preparing to declassify and make public almost a thousand pages of highly classified records pertaining to the FBI investigation into Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election to help elect him, and defeat Hillary Clinton — he turned to conservative columnist John Solomon for help.

On Jan 14, 2021, less than a week before Trump was to leave office, Solomon excitedly declared on his podcast, “I am here to tell you that, just a little while ago, President Trump authorized the declassification of all remaining FBI documents of the Russia probe to be made public before he leaves office.” Solomon said that the records consisted of a “foot and a half stack tall of documents from the FBI and Justice Department,” which, Solomon promised, would, in turn, contain “bombshell after bombshell.”

Towards that end, on Jan. 19, 2021, the day before he was to leave office, Trump signed a presidential order declaring that the Russia papers were to “be declassified to the maximum extent possible.” The order was signed about 7 p.m., ET.

On the very next day, though, just as Joe Biden was about to take his oath of office, Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, wrote a memo apparently clarifying Trump’s order, indicating that the documents would not be made public anytime soon. Meadows wrote in his Jan. 20, 2021 memo that the White House was “returning the bulk of the... documents to the Department of Justice” because of concerns by the department that their release would violate the Privacy Act.

Despite this, Solomon was able to post a story on his own website, Just the News, on the night of Jan. 19, 2021, and then another the following week, sourced from some of these very same records.

In the second of those stories, Solomon confirmed that they were based on documents that “were kept from the American people for four years until President Trump declassified them on his final day in office last week.”  Solomon highlighted the fact that the documents were exclusive to him: “They were obtained by Just the News.”  He also posted the actual documents online to accompany both stories.

In a number of conversations I have had with Solomon over the last several weeks, he provided me with differing and contradictory explanations as to how these records came into his possession. In his first telling, he said that on the evening of Jan. 19, around 8 p.m. ET — on the eve of Biden’s inauguration and just one hour after Trump signed his presidential order declassifying the Russian papers — someone unknown to him delivered them to the concierge’s desk of the office building where he works.

In a “plain manila envelope,” he said, he found “about thirty to fifty pages of records” — many of these were about the infamous Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the so-called “Steele dossier;” while others were about Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who assisted in the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s covert interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Accompanying the documents, Solomon told me, was a one-page note or letter from a Justice Department official, who had sent over the documents. The official wrote that the enclosed records were a “down payment” and that the rest of a “binder” full of documents would soon be on the way as well. Solomon also told me that he could not recall the name of the official. I did not press him further on the issue during that first conversation, but I did ask to read the letter. He told me that he no longer had a copy.

In a subsequent conversation, Solomon now said that the cover letter was not from a Justice Department attorney after all, but instead from someone he described as a White House lawyer. That made little sense, since I knew that then-White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, and his deputy, Patrick Philbin, had warned Trump and Meadows of the impropriety of releasing the Russia papers outside the normal declassification process. Solomon told me that he could not recall the White House lawyer’s name. When I pointed out that he had only days earlier told me that the lawyer worked for the Justice Department, he now said that he was unsure for which government office the person had worked. I pressed him a bit once more about being able to read the letter or note, and this time he told me that seeing it would do nothing to resolve the issue, because the person did not sign their name to it, or identify themselves in any other way. Solomon now denied ever knowing the identity of the person.

In another conversation, Solomon reverted to the facts as laid out in his original account. He was certain this time that the records came from the Justice Department. He was sure, he now claimed, because he recalled that both the envelope the documents came in, as well as the accompanying cover letter, had the “Justice Department insignia” on them. He said he hadn’t retained the envelope either.

In an earlier conversation Solomon had with a close colleague, later relayed to me by that same person, Solomon had said that Trump had sent the papers to him and it was Trump, who had assured him that he had sent over only the “down payment,” of other records on their way. That account raises more questions than answers: Was the letter or note from Trump himself — or from someone conveying Trump’s sentiments?;  Had Solomon insinuated the note was from Trump to make himself appear more important?;  Who really sent him the documents?; Why hadn’t Solomon retained a copy of the note or cover letter?; Why hasn’t Special Counsel Jack Smith attempted to find out more? (Solomon and other individuals with knowledge of these matters say they have not been contacted by FBI agents or the special counsel.)

Earlier on the very day that Solomon had received the records—Trump’s last full day in office; Solomon and Trump met in the White House. The president told Solomon that a “binder” of what both men considered to be explosive government secrets would soon be in Solomon’s possession, whereupon Solomon, as the person chosen by the president to do so, would share them with the American people. Trump told Solomon that his declassification order was about to be signed. In the meantime, according to Solomon, he was allowed by Trump to read a small number of the then-still classified records, but not take any with him. Trump assured him that they would all be his soon enough.

In one of my conversations with Solomon, he went out of his way to tell me that the documents were not— as he had asserted on his podcast and in an article— “a foot, foot and a half stack tall of documents from the FBI and Justice Department”—but rather “only two or three inches of records.”  Solomon had made the claim of having seen a “foot and a half” stack of documents not just one time, but on several occasions, in articles and on his podcast.  In setting the record straight, if in fact that is what Solomon was doing, he was admitting having knowingly misled the public. As with other instances when we spoke, Solomon appeared to be willing to admit something negative about himself, to the detriment of his own personal reputation and professional standing, if it would protect Trump or was exculpatory to the ex-president:  In this instance, if the number of documents Trump allegedly mishandled was far fewer than thought, whether they be the Russia papers or classified documents he took to Mar-a-Largo, then the magnitude of Trump’s alleged wrongdoing would seem less serious as well. 

Solomon’s meeting with Trump in the White House occurred against the backdrop of a nation reeling from the Jan. 6th insurrection and Trump’s broader efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.  At least 138 police officers standing in the breach were injured. Four police officers who defended the Capitol would later take their lives. President Trump was now facing his second impeachment. When I asked Solomon about whether he spoke to the president about the insurrection, he told me he had not attempted to ask a single question about it. Trump did not bring up the subject either.

After meeting with Trump, Solomon raced back to his office, and waited for the papers to arrive. Drawing upon the documents Trump had directed be given to him, Solomon posted a story on Christopher Steele.  Solomon had promised his story would contain “explosive allegations” and “bombshell revelations.”  But Steele and his dossier had been discredited long ago, and what Solomon represented as the new information contained in his story was either previously reported or not particularly newsworthy. Virtually the very same information that Solomon reported about Steele from his secret papers had been revealed two years earlier by the Justice Department’s inspector general, who had conducted an investigation of the FBI’s conduct during its Russia investigation. (That the Department’s inspector general undertook such an investigation in the first place, and that his report was sharply critical of several aspects of the FBI’s handling of the Russia probe, appears to undercut claims by Trump and Solomon that the DOJ and FBI were institutionally corrupt, an inconvenient fact lost on both men.)

The second story, posted by Solomon the following week, was based on not only the summaries but the actual transcripts of secretly recorded conversations between Carter Page, a foreign policy advisor to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, and Stefan Halper, an FBI informant who secretly recorded Page.  The FBI was then investigating Page as part of its broader investigation of Russia’s covert efforts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Halper was tasked by the FBI with talking to Page and learning all he could find out.

During the Russia investigation, code named “Crossfire Hurricane,” Page was one of four advisors to Trump who were placed under electronic surveillance, pursuant to warrants approved under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and by the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

In his scathing report on the FBI’s conduct of the Russia probe, made public in December 2019, the Justice Department’s Inspector General criticized the surveillance of Page in particular, finding numerous “significant inaccuracies and omissions” by the FBI in regards to its FISA warrant applications relating to wiretap him. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who approved the warrant applications be submitted to the FISC, has since said that he would never have approved them if the information in the applications had been accurate and truthful.

But the same report also found no evidence whatsoever of any political bias by FBI or DOJ officials as a factor in the initiation or conduct of their investigation—and also none whatsoever of a vast conspiracy, as Trump and his political allies have claimed, by these agencies to prevent Trump’s election, or once he became president, to drive him from office.

Complicating matters even further regarding exactly when Solomon obtained classified information to write his two stories were comments he made on his Jan. 14 podcast, six days before Trump’s declassification order, and about two weeks before Solomon posted his story on Halper, during which Solomon hinted that he already knew the contents of the then-still classified papers about Halper, further implying that he had already read or had copies of them.

“There’s all sorts of revelations about Stefan Halper...,” Solomon informed the listeners of his podcast, “Stefan Halper is the guy that put a wire on and recorded people like...  Carter Page.”

Solomon continued: “His tasking orders, are, I believe, are going to be declassified. What is a tasking order?  It’s when the FBI sits down and says, ‘Hey, informant, this is what we need you to do.’  And I believe when people read these tasking orders... the FBI wanted to spy on the Trump campaign... This FBI document will prove this for sure!”

If Trump did in fact share classified information or documents regarding Halper with Solomon so many days prior to his declassification order, that would appear to indicate that Trump or others close to him leaked him the material when it was still very much classified.

Solomon told me that neither Trump, nor Meadows, nor anyone else at the White House leaked him the then-still highly classified information about Halper that he spoke about on his Jan. 14, 2021 podcast. Rather, Solomon said, several members of Congress and congressional staff had only recently been briefed regarding what Trump hoped would be in the declassified Russia papers. He told me that he in turn had spoken with members of Congress, their staff, and witnesses to a Justice Department Inspector General’s probe that was investigating some of these same matters, and it was from them that he learned about the classified papers regarding Halper in particular. Trump and Meadows, Solomon maintained, had told him nothing.

Yet when Solomon received his “down payment” on the full set of the Russia papers, they were almost entirely about Steele and Halper. How did the sender know that that was what Solomon wanted most? Solomon suggested to me that either people in the White House or at the Justice Department listened to his podcast and knew of his desire, or that members of Congress or congressional staff had the same priorities and had conveyed those to people at the White House or the Justice Department.

A former congressional staffer with knowledge of these matters from his personal involvement told me that Solomon’s account of this may have been “to some degree... technically accurate” while also artfully “disingenuous and misleading.” If nothing else, his account constituted a lie by omission. This person told me that an unabridged set of the Russia papers were shared with the Republican staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. This same person said that Trump, Meadows and others at the White House had devised a scheme by which committee Republicans, not apolitical employees at the FBI or Justice Department, would review the Russia papers and make whatever redactions they considered necessary — in the process ignoring the requests and demands of the FBI, Justice Department and other executive branch agencies. If anyone were to cry foul, the Trump White House could claim that the president had the legal authority to declassify virtually any government secrets he wanted, that the FBI and DOJ were dragging their feet to cover up their own agency’s wrongdoing, and that Trump had gone the extra mile by having congressional intelligence committee staff review the documents to assuage any real concerns that the declassification harmed our national security.

This same person further told me that Solomon often acted more like a participant, rather than a detached journalistic observer, in his dealings with congressional staff and members, regarding the issue of the Russia papers. Among other things, Solomon suggested that certain specific records were of greater import than others — namely the records about Steele and Halper. Congressional staff relayed this information to the White House. Officials there deferred to Solomon’s judgment. Very shortly thereafter, these same particular records were provided to Solomon as his “down payment” by a U.S. government official whose name he says he does not know.

Journalist John Solomon

Obviously, Solomon may not be the most reliable narrator of his own story.  That is not new. He has a career-spanning track record of serious errors and overstatements at times in his journalism.  In defending himself, he has been caught further misleading the public.

On Nov. 12, 2019,  The New York Times reported that Solomon’s “reporting and commentary helped trigger the chain of events” leading to Trump’s first impeachment. (Trump was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to announce an investigation of Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden to boost Trump’s presidential campaign, by threatening to withhold almost $400 million worth military aid already approved for Ukraine. This included stocks of the Javelin anti-tank missile launchers that would famously prove to be Ukraine’s salvation against Russia’s far larger tank fleet during the desperate early phases of the 2022 invasion.) The Times questioned the accuracy of much of that reporting and the veracity of many of the sources he relied on.

 “Mr. Solomon has been a surprisingly central figure in the impeachment proceedings so far,” wrote Times reporters Jeremy Peters and Kenneth Vogel, “But the glare has not been so kind.”

During a congressional hearing, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the National Security Council staffer, whose testimony in large part led to Trump’s first impeachment, pointed out a number of inaccuracies and falsehoods in one of Solomon’s article, before conceding, during questioning by a Republican Congressman, that “his grammar might have been right.”

Solomon’s own newspaper of employment at the time— the Hill, which published his Ukraine reporting — conducted a formal after-the-fact review of the 14 columns he wrote on the subject. That review concluded: “In certain columns, Solomon failed to identify important details about key Ukrainian sources, including the fact that they had been indicted or were under investigation. In other cases, the sources were his own attorneys.” His attorneys additionally represented not only many of Solomon’s most dubious sources, but Solomon as well during the very same time— information he withheld from his readers.

Earlier, in an August/July, 2012 profile of Solomon, the Columbia Journalism Review concluded with respect to his broader body of work: “Solomon has a history of bending the truth to his story line. As a reporter for the AP and The Washington Post, he dug up his share of genuine dirt, but he also was notorious for massaging facts to conjure phantom scandals.”

Now largely on his own and left to his own devices (except for a small staff) Solomon in his reporting has increasingly drifted further and further from news reporting to openly embracing and trafficking in conspiracy theories (among them baseless claims of massive voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election costing Trump the presidency). Even as he has been increasingly ostracized from the mainstream, he is now also among the most highly praised journalists of his time by those in his ideological lane, winning the approval of Sean Hannity, the late Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and a president of the United States.

Most recently, Solomon has taken to attacking the FBI, the “Deep State” Justice Department (as both he and Trump often call the Department) and special counsel Jack Smith for their investigation of Trump’s removal of classified papers to Mar-a-Largo. Solomon describes Trump as a victim of persecution who should not be under investigation at all.

In contrast, Solomon has complained that a separate special counsel investigating President Biden’s removal of classified documents from the White House has been neither sufficiently thorough or aggressive. Solomon has made baseless claims that a relatively few pages of classified documents found in Biden’s home might have been used to further the allegedly illicit business interests of the President’s son, Hunter. Also without any evidence, Solomon has espoused the narrative of an elaborate and expansive conspiracy theory alleging that Hunter Biden had utilized information from the classified documents to allegedly facilitate corrupt business dealings with foreign governments, that a share of profits from those deals was shared with his father, the President of the United States, and that the Justice Department has been covering all of this up. In making these outlandish claims, Solomon was mirroring similar comments made by Trump and talking points by some right-wing members of Congress.

This was in part what Solomon has said:

We now know that these documents landed… at the Biden Wilmington home, at a time when Hunter Biden was frequenting the house where the documents were stored. Some of the topics in the documents are topics of interest to countries where Hunter Biden had ongoing financial interests like Ukraine, and that Hunter Biden was deeply involved in soliciting and trying to arrange large payments to his family from China, a country that spends a lot of time in espionage…. These documents may have been taken and moved around the country to places where the family could access them because it would bring benefit to some of their foreign clients.

There is no evidence that Hunter Biden ever accessed these papers, that they had anything to do with China or Ukraine, or that Joe Biden profited from, or was in any way involved with his son’s overseass business dealings. As to Solomon’s allegations of a coverup, the United States Attorney investigating Hunter Biden, David Weiss, is a Republican who was appointed to his position by Donald Trump. (No information has come to light that Weiss has found any evidence whatsoever to support any of the more fantastical charges made by Trump and Solomon.) The special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Biden’s removal of classified documents from the White House, Robert Hurr, is also a former United States Attorney appointed to his position by Trump.

Special counsel Jack Smith… pool photo

***

In light of the fact that Mark Meadows had acknowledged in his memo that the documents continued to be classified — and, in their current form, not in compliance with the Privacy Act — how and why did they still end up in Solomon’s articles?

One potential explanation provided to me by more than one former official, was that Trump had the right as president to make public the records, and that the Privacy Act did not apply to a president while declassifying records.

Indeed, Meadows acknowledged as much in his memo, writing: “We understand that the [Justice Department’s] Office of Legal Counsel has advised that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House and thus would not apply to any disclosure of the documents by the White House.”

On this point, Meadows was correct: The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel had in fact concluded as much in two separate legal opinions, one dating back to 1975, when Gerald Ford was president.

Despite that being the case, however, Meadows promised that the White House would still strictly abide by the Privacy Act, writing in his memo: “Accordingly I am returning the bulk of the... declassified documents to the Department of Justice (including all that appear to have the potential to raise privacy concerns) with the instruction that the Department must expeditiously conduct a privacy act review, under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied.”

Earlier that morning, as Biden was preparing to take the oath of office, Meadows and at least one other White House official scrambled back to the White House to retrieve the binder of Russian records, with the intent of providing them to the National Archives. One official later informed a colleague that they faced a “broader problem,” an apparent reference to the possibility that other classified records had not properly been secured—- a prescient observation considering the search warrant executed by the FBI at Mar-a-Largo and the appointment of a special counsel.

No information has surfaced that any of the hundreds of pages of classified documents that Trump removed from the White House and took to Mar-a-Largo were related to the Russia investigation. But Trump’s handling of the Russia papers may explain his moving other classified documents to Mar-a-Largo, according to two former White House aides I interviewed for my month of reporting for this story. One who spoke to Trump directly said that Trump feared that once he was no longer president, not only might the Russia papers remain classified, “they would suddenly disappear as if they never existed at all.” This person added: “He was deeply paranoid on that point.” Another former aide told me that Meadows was “anxious” that Trump would declassify or leak the Russia papers on his own, ignoring his advice and that of the White House Counsel.

Bradley Moss, a longtime attorney specializing in national security issues, told me that although Trump, as president, had the legal authority to give the documents to Solomon — albeit with the caveat that Trump did so while he was still president and not afer he left office — the Russia papers in this particular case still remained classified when Trump passed them to Solomon.

Moss explained: “An actual proper declassification involves a formal process that requires their ‘De-marking,’ the reversing of the markings on the records indicating they were classified. The proper De-marking of these documents would reflect the date of the declassification, the person who declassified them, and the authority on which they acted. That’s what the process requires.”

Yet, that was not done in this instance.

After having reviewed, at my request, the documents Trump directed be provided to Solomon, Moss said there were no such markings on them, and thus, in his opinion, they remained classified when he provided them to Solomon. (Other former and current government attorneys who have worked on declassification issues, however, disagree, saying that although Trump may have set aside other government laws [such as the Privacy Act], and long-standing executive branch rules and ethical norms, in declassifying the Russia papers, Trump had in fact, legally, if not ethically, declassified them. That’s because, in their view, the president’s constitutional authority to declassify most previously secret records is largely unconditional and unfettered.)

The fact that the Russian papers weren’t properly De-marked, apparently by people who would have had no idea how to do so, also further raises the possibility that whoever attempted it was someone outside of the normal declassification process — such as someone in the White House, a DOJ official with ties to Trump outside official channels, or a Republican House Intelligence Committee staffer.

Even though Moss believes that the records Trump gave to Solomon were still classified, he says he agrees with other legal experts on classification issues, that Trump likely did not violate law, because a president has the right to declassify virtually anything he wants (the lone exception being atomic secrets): “The executive classification power derives out of an executive order,” Moss told me, Thus, a president could not be accused of breaking what are essentially his own rules. “Donald Trump was free to disseminate the documents to Solomon without fear of violating the law,” Moss adds.

Moss noted, however, that if Trump leaked the papers to Solomon after he left office, Trump’s conduct would likely have been illegal: “Anything Trump had in his possession that was still classified and that he gave to Solomon after 12:01pm on January 21, 2021, was unlawful as a legal matter.”

As I first reported here on Jan. 18, Special Counsel Jack Smith has interviewed several individuals about Trump’s handling of the Russia papers. I wrote that prosecutors appear to have been investigating that matter because it may provide insight into the former president’s frame of mind in taking so many classified documents to Mar-a-Lago and then allegedly concealing that information from the National Archives and the Justice Department. Trump’s frame of mind — his intent and motivation — are likely to be foundational building blocks of any case that the special counsel might consider bringing against Trump.

On the podcast Jack — co-hosted by Alison Gil, the former host of the popular Mueller She Wrote podcast, and Andrew McCabe, the former Deputy Director of the FBI — McCabe said that the disclosures in that story appeared to indicate that the special counsel was closer to making a charging decision, explaining:

Motive is not actually required to prove a case against anyone.  Motive is not an element of the offense. But… criminal intent is of course an element of every criminal offense. What motive does for you is that it gets you closer to proving intent. It puts the question of intent in a context that allows the jury to kind of think though whether or not they believe they have seen and heard enough information to attribute the acts of the defendant to some sort of criminal intent. So, I think it’s potentially very powerful evidence.

The new information in this story also raises the possibility that the special counsel might at some point broaden his investigation to include a criminal inquiry of Trump’s handling of the Russia papers, according to legal experts not personally involved in the case. As noted previously in this story, if Trump passed classified materials to Solomon after his presidency ended, Trump’s actions would likely have been in violation of federal law.

Liza Goitenine, the Senior Director of the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, adds: “Trump, as president, has the authority to declassify information. But there are two parts to that process. One is making the decision that the information doesn’t require classification. The second is following the procedures necessary to implement that decision.”

Bran Greer, an attorney at the CIA’s Office of General Counsel from 2010 to 2018, speaking more broadly of this particular episode, told me: "The classification system was set up on the assumption that the president would be acting in good faith and in the public interest. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case here."

In the end, Solomon’s story about Halper, running under the sensational headline “Declassified! The Russia Informant Transcript the FBI Didn’t Want Americans to See,” fell far short of being the “bombshell” that Solomon promised, as he had also been the case with his story about Christopher Steele. Solomon wrote that Page’s comments to Halper during their recorded conversation were shocking because they were “exculpatory” to Page. But Page had mostly just denied to Halper many of the serious allegations made against him appearing in media reports, something hardly surprising or even that newsworthy, or a reason why a FISA court would have turned down approving a warrant to electronically surveil Page.

The transcript of conversation between Halper and Page actually portrayed Page in a far less than flattering light and contained information that likely would have damaged his reputation if anyone carefully read the transcript of it online — underscoring why abiding by the Privacy Act during a declassification process might be a worthy rule to follow.

Page was recorded telling Halper that he was thinking of founding a think tank that would advocate for closer relations between the US and Putin’s Russia; a financially lucrative venture, Page said, were the Russians to fund it. Page was overheard saying:

“I don’t want to say there’d be an open checkbook, but the Russians would definitely ...” The transcript indicates that Page’s voice trailed off before he broke out laughing. “They would fund it. Yeah, you could do alright there.”

Editing: Arie Serota and Jonathan Simon

Previous story: “Exclusive: Special Counsel has questioned several officials about Donald Trump's handling of Russia probe papers,” January 18.

© 2023  Murray Waas