coverage of a historic federal indictment of a former president of united states begins at this hour with the dramatic full statement made by special prosecutor jack smith this afternoon when he, in effect, introduced himself to the american people, speaking publicly for the very first time in his six and a half months of investigating donald trump. good afternoon. today an indictment was unsealed. charging donald j trump with felony violations of our national security laws as well as participating in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. this indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the southern district of florida and i invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged. the men and women of the united states intelligence community and our armed forces dedicate their lives to protecting our nation and its people. our laws the protect national defense information are critical to the safety and security of the united stat
whether or not, in fact, whether the documents that were down there were in fact to the detriment of national sources and national security. joining our continuing discussion is peter strzok, adjunct at the school of former service and the former deputy of fbi s counter intelligence division. peter, well the points that john brennan made earlier tonight is that if someone were deliberately going in there, looking at these documents, they wouldn t necessarily take the document. they would take a photo of the document. they will take a picture of it, leaving the document where it is. so even don trump doesn t know that it has been compromised. and that is the kind of thing that is going to make it extremely difficult for the intelligence community to know what was compromised. lawrence, i think that s absolutely right. there is a retrospective
problem and a prospect to problem. the retrospective problem is exactly what you indicating there. people have been staying up overnight losing sleep trying to figure out who had access to this information, what sources and methods might have been exposed, what people need to be protected, what techniques need to be adjusted. but it s not just going back and looking in trying to figure out this very soft target mar-a-lago, which is absolutely a top intelligence priority for any credible foreign intelligence service where the russians, chinese, iranians, anybody else. the problem is also prospectives. if your chinese intelligence officer let s say in new delhi and you really are inclined to work for the united states of america and you happen to run into a cia case officer, or say you are russian case officer at the mission to the notations of new york and you really wanted to work with the united states. and you turn on your tv and you see a shower and a toilet surrounded by boxes and