A little-known US intel agency responded on Wednesday to a September 2022 FOIA request from Bloomberg reporter Jason Leopold, denying his request for documents relating to any “risk or damage assessments” requested or undertaken by the Department of Justice relating to Donald Trump’s possession of classified information that forwarded to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, but in doing so noted that ODNI had done such assessments as far back as February.
The Defense Intelligence Agency–basically, the Pentagon’s independent intel collection and analysis group–noted that ODNI forwarded four documents, totaling eleven pages, that may meet the FOIA request, but DIA determined the information was too highly classified to release any of it.
Of course, they’d do a risk assessment, you’re thinking. Well, yeah, but the existence of such an assessment would support Jack Smith’s charges against Trump based on the Espionage Act, which doesn’t require documents to be classified to be considered information regarding national defense. A risk or damage assessment could play into Smith’s prosecution of Trump, demonstrating that the information was still pertinent to national security without having to prove Trump did not declassify the documents.