Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm senior editor Mike Warren. Donald Trump was

a rain on 37 counts earlier this week. He's accused of keeping highly classified documents

from after he left the White House in 2021. And then thwarting efforts from federal investigators

were trying to get those documents back. I wanted to talk about classification, about

how this scandal compares with those from other high-level elected officials like Hillary

Clinton, Joe Biden and Mike Pence. And I wanted to talk about whether overclassification

is a problem. So I asked former congressman Peter Meyer from Michigan, a Republican,

to talk with me. He's got an interesting background. He is a former United States Army intelligence

official and officer himself. Peter joined me to talk about all of these issues. Take

a listen.

Peter Meyer, welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. And let's get right into the meat of this indictment.

And maybe as a, I should say, let's get a little bit of your background and your sort of expertise

on this. You've been on both sides of the intelligence gathering kind of conversation,

both as an Army intelligence officer and as an elected official. When you're in the house,

you served on committees dealing with intelligence, classified information and Homeland Security.

So when we look at the meat of this indictment of Donald Trump, it presents a lot of evidence

that the former president handled classified information not only without authorization,

but sort of in this haphazard and careless way. Again, that's what the government's case

is. So I'm curious, first of what your thoughts were about these kind of prosaic details,

the kind of everyday details about how these documents were handled while in Trump's possession.

Were you as shocked as I was at the way he handled them?

Peter Meyer, I mean, certainly what the indictment lays out does not make any case that these documents

...