The hits, they keep on a-comin’. Newly declassified documents confirm Donald Trump recklessly disclosed the capabilities of a highly classified surveillance satellite system when he tweeted a classified photo shown to him during a national security briefing, NPR reports.
On a day when the Attorney General appointed a Special Counsel to investigate multiple episodes of Trump’s malfeasance, the disclosure of the extent of a security breach Trump’s tweet created amplifies the narrative of the former president’s disregard for national security when it interferes with his self-gratification.
The photograph of an Iranian launch site destroyed by a rocket malfunction was part of a national security briefing at which Trump asked to keep a copy of the photograph; an hour later, he tweeted it out to his tens of millions of followers. Some national security analysts speculated at the time, based on the resolution of the photograph that it was taken by a drone or high-altitude flyover. However, due to notations and instrument readings included in Trump’s tweeted image, aerospace experts recognized it as a satellite image, likely taken by a highly classified KH-11 series satellite.