there is “almost no historical parallel” for President Trump’s unstructured, often clandestine daily schedule.179
Trump’s highly secretive phone use would be less of a concern if it were, like everything else a president does, publicly reviewable through congressional or FOIA oversight. In fact, as the New York Times reports in late 2018, Trump has been insisting throughout his presidency on using nonsecure phones unregulated by his aides, the Secret Service, congressional oversight, or any governmental transparency mechanisms. As the Times recounts in an October 2018 article entitled “When Trump Phones Friends, the Chinese and the Russians Listen and Learn,” Trump regularly uses multiple personal iPhones—it is not clear why he has more than one—to “call[] old friends … to gossip, gripe, or solicit their latest take on how he is doing,” often discussing topics of sufficient gravity that his words provide “invaluable insights” on U.S. domestic and foreign policy to anyone listening in on the line.180 According to White House officials, during these nonsecure calls to friends and world leaders Trump may well be discussing classified information.
Despite “repeated warnings” from his aides that “Russian spies are routinely eavesdropping on [his iPhone] calls,” Trump refuses to cease putting American intelligence and policy at risk—a reckless practice that seems in direct opposition to the supposed paranoia that causes him to hide his schedule and phone habits from even his top aides in the first instance.181 Indeed, it is unclear why Trump needs these calls to friends, advisers, and world leaders to be outside the conventional call-logging system used at the White House but also—apparently—open to intercept. The Times notes that at least one hostile foreign nation has been using its intercepts of Trump’s “executive time” iPhone calls to “piece[] together a list of the people with whom Mr. Trump regularly speaks in hopes of using them to influence the president.”182 In this way, deliberately or otherwise, Trump is able to speak to individuals around the world without reporting his calls to Congress or other public advocates, while also telegraphing to foreign nations which of his friends and advisers are most deserving of illicit foreign-money largesse and/or can be used to backchannel information to him.
As of 2019, Trump has “two official iPhones that have been altered by the National Security Agency to limit their abilities and vulnerabilities,” but a third phone the president insists on using “is no different from hundreds of millions of iPhones in use around the world.”183 “None of [the iPhones],” according to the New York Times, “are completely secure … calls made from the phones are intercepted as they travel through the cell towers, cables, and switches that make up national and international cell phone networks.”184 Trump’s third, “personal” iPhone is consequently as significant a security risk—or perhaps a greater one—than the private, unsecured email server used by former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the use of which Trump claimed was a federal crime requiring Clinton’s imprisonment.185 Whereas Clinton defended her use of a private email server as a matter of convenience only, according to the Times Trump’s use of a nonsecure cell phone in the face of warnings from senior White House officials is explained by a deliberate penchant for secrecy—an expressed desire to ensure that even his senior aides don’t have knowledge, let alone a record, of his calls.186 As for his two official phones, Trump has refused to “swap them out” every thirty days as required by White House protocol.187
Jared Kushner’s unauthorized use of encrypted messaging apps for conversations with foreign leaders, and Ivanka’s failure to preserve her email communications in accordance with law, will also come under substantial scrutiny in 2019, with Kushner’s WhatsApp practice being called a “recipe for disaster” that puts “highly sensitive government communications … at risk of exploitation by foreign governments and hackers,” and Ivanka’s use of a personal email address for government business widely deemed a violation of federal records laws.188 Even Trump’s deputy national security advisor, K. T. McFarland—one of the top national security officials in the country—will be found to have used a simple AOL email account to discuss with Thomas Barrack the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.189 Despite warnings about these and other security risks in the Trump White House, they will continue seemingly unabated, with Kushner still using WhatsApp for conversations he is legally obligated to preserve as late as December 2018.190
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In February, Kushner family friend Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, shocks the world by revealing what had heretofore been a