Donald Trump took a moment at an Oval Office event to brag about his decision to release thousands of documents related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which he characterized as a great breakthrough. Unprompted, however, the president brought up a serious point of contention.
“We even released Social Security numbers; I didn’t want anything deleted,” he told reporters. “They said, ‘Sir, what about Social Security numbers?’ … But they’re long gone. I can’t imagine.”
Evidently, the president isn’t keeping up on current events. The New York Times reported:
The Trump administration scrambled to minimize fallout on Thursday after exposing personal information, including Social Security numbers, of hundreds of congressional staff members, intelligence researchers and even an ambassador when releasing files pertaining to the death of President John F. Kennedy.
I realize the Trump White House has faced important questions about its competence, but it would’ve been easy to avoid this humiliation.
On Monday, the president directed the National Archives to disclose 64,000 pages of documents related to Kennedy’s 1963 assassination. On Tuesday, the materials were released to the public — unredacted.
On Wednesday, the White House decided it’d probably be a good idea to check to see if officials, following Trump’s explicit order, had just exposed the Social Security numbers of living people. And on Thursday, the Republican team acknowledged that there was a problem.
The president might be under the impression that the relevant people are “long gone,” but that’s not even close to being true: In fact, Joe diGenova — Trump’s own former campaign lawyer — was one of the people whose Social Security number was released to the public.
What’s more, the problem isn’t limited to Social Security numbers: Birthdates, birthplaces and other private information — related to living people — was also released as part of the same exercise.
If you’re wondering whether all of this suggests that the White House violated federal private laws in the course of this debacle, plenty of experts suggested that the answer is yes. There might even be litigation as a result of Trump’s screw-up.
The Washington Post reported, “Many whose Social Security numbers were exposed had become high-ranking officials in Washington. They include a former assistant secretary of state, a former U.S. ambassador, researchers in the intelligence world, State Department workers and prominent lawyers.”
In the hopes of putting things right, the White House directed the Social Security Administration to issue new numbers to the affected people, as well as offering free credit monitoring.
Because if there’s one thing people in their 80s and 90s want to deal with, it’s to start over with new Social Security numbers and incorporate those into their financial lives.
The New York Times’ report added administration officials “knew before the documents went out that releasing them without redactions would expose some personal information,” and while that might seem outrageous, Trump confirmed this morning that when he was confronted with this warning, he chose to ignore it because he assumed all of the relevant people would be dead.
Many of the relevant people are, however, alive and well — but suddenly worried about being doxxed.
It’s possible at this point that some readers might be thinking to themselves, “This might be awful for those affected by the White House’s latest fiasco, and I’m relieved that I’m not involved.” And while that would be an understandable reaction, let’s not forget that Team Trump isn’t exactly going out of its way to protect everyone else’s private Social Security information, either. The Washington Post also reported:
A federal judge on Thursday barred U.S. DOGE Service employees from accessing sensitive Social Security Administration data and ordered members of the team led by Elon Musk to delete any personally identifiable information it has obtained from the agency. On the broad premise of rooting out fraud within the federal government, about a dozen Musk-aligned tech engineers gained access to databases containing reams of taxpayer information.
“To facilitate this expedition, SSA provided members of the SSA DOGE Team with unbridled access to the personal and private data of millions of Americans,” U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander wrote. That included access to “Social Security numbers, medical records, mental health records, hospitalization records, drivers’ license numbers, bank and credit card information, tax information, income history, work history, birth and marriage certificates, and home and work addresses.”
In the process, the judge added, the Trump administration exposed “personal, confidential, sensitive, and private information that millions of Americans entrusted to their government.”
I have a hunch we haven’t heard the last of this story.
