Trump’s defence secretary Mark Esper says his hoarding of secrets was ‘unauthorised, illegal and dangerous’

Mark Esper is latest high-level Trump admin official to affirm gravity of ex-president’s charges

Donald Trump’s former defence chief threw cold water on the assertion from his former boss and his allies that the classified records and other documents seized from the ex-president’s home and resort in an FBI raid were his to take.

As the ex-president’s loyalists continue to offer a wide scope of defences for their leader ranging from arguments that Mr Trump was allowed to designate the materials as personal records for his own safekeeping to the idea that the prosecution is merely a politicised weaponisation of the Justice Department, former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has offered his own assessment on the situation.

On Sunday, he joined CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper, and flatly stated that his ex-boss’s actions were “illegal and dangerous”.

“People have described him as a hoarder when it comes to these type of documents. But, clearly, it was unauthorized, illegal and dangerous,” said Mr Esper.

“If the allegations are true that it contained information about our nation’s security, about our vulnerabilities, about other items, it could be quite harmful to the nation. And, look, no one is above the law. And so I think this process needs to play out and people held to account, the president held to account,” he continued.

It was a firm look at the facts of the investigation from a man who, under the same ex-president now facing roughly three dozen federal charges, had access to some of the nation’s most classified materials and had oversight over America’s armed services as well as intelligence services such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA).

Mr Esper was one of a number of the former president’s top officials who did not make it through the end of the Trump presidency; in the secretary’s case, he was fired days after the 2020 election as an increasingly volatile then-President Trump ordered thousands of US troops out of an already rapidly-deteriorating Afghanistan — reportedly having wanted the effort to conclude even before the election.

Others, like members of his press team and the head of the Department of Transportation, Elaine Chao, would resign following the attack on the US Capitol by thousands of Mr Trump’s supporters on January 6.

The withdrawal agreement signed by the Trump administration has widely been cited as contributing to the swift end of Afghanistan’s democratic government at the hands of the Taliban, accelerating with the departure of military contractors under Joe Biden’s presidency in 2021.

Mr Trump has pled not guilty to 37 charges related to his allegedly illegal retention of documents from the White House following the end of his presidency, includng classified materials. He separately faces 34 counts of falsifying business records in New York state.