boxes. the new york times reports this, quote, during president trump s years in the white house his aides began to refer to the boxes full of papers and odds and ends he carted around with him almost everywhere as the beautiful mind material. it was a reference to the title of a book and movie depicting the life of john f nash jr., the mathematician with schizophrenia played in the film by russell crow. one trump official who spoke anonplacely to describe the situation said while the materials were disorganized trump would notice if someone rifled through them or they were not arranged in a particular way. it was the person said, quote, how his mind works but the times describes trump s organized chaos was nothing new. here s a look at his office at trump tower back in 2015 from an interview with wall street germ. this office is all you, and it s a little bit junky. yeah. you know what? this i just got a few weeks ago. this is from the marine corp. that s the chair f
you know, all those places, it s not just the question of what trump did with it, the division is whether or not other people, possible intelligence services, the russian, the thicheese possibly are targeting not only mar-a-lago but bedminster and trump tower and all these places. so even if trump didn t want to do anything with those documents showing them to people, and we know from the indictment it appears he did at least in the case of the iran document, that there is a risk simply by taking those outside of controlled space. so that didn t stop obviously when he left the presidency because he kept all those documents. i think there s a very reasonable question about whether or not even today the government has back all the classified information trump took with him. and so if i m in the intelligence community, not only have i been busy doing a risk assessment of all the documents being recovered to figure out what needs to be mitigated, i ve got this deep, uneasy feeling in
the pit of my stomach wondering what else was taken that i don t have back, that i need to worry about. it s a question and a threat that hasn t stopped. and again, looking at this i see it as a counter intelligence nightmare. mike, you ve done extensive reporting on the counter intelligence questions that were asked about donald trump at the beginning of his presidency. in some ways i look at it, but it s sort of i m not sure if it s a next chapter or a book end, but, look, in may of 217, you know, andy mccabe and struck open up this investigation into whether donald trump is a national security threat and obstructing justice. and while the issues in the indictment are different than the issues that they were looking at at the time,
ambassador kisdiak whether or not he s under the thrall or leverage on the part of russia that is a counter intelligence concern. i think mike is contactually right that say the begin ofg the trump presidency. i mean, heck, that came up during his campaign when he made the russia, if you re listening, i hope you find e-mails. he s calling on russia as that government to help him, and it goes through up until the current date. i do think there s this national security thread line that is an important component but different from the things we re seeing from jack smith. mary, i ll give you the last word and get you on the record for something andrew wiseman flagged for all of us yesterday, which is this background check process under way that the department of justice has entered a protective order. but the first is why does this matter? this matters because trump didn t commit just any crime. trump committed the crime of endangering u.s. national security by the willful retention of n