A court document published on Friday revealed that it was the presence of top-secret documents in boxes recovered from Donald Trump that prompted the US Federal Police (FBI) to search for the former president’s residence.
This procedural document, written prior to the August 8 search for permission, explains the reasons why federal investigators considered this police operation necessary, completely unprecedented for a former president and the cause of a political storm.
The US Department of Justice, which was forced into this disclosure by a judge, redacted a very large portion of it in order to protect the investigation.
In February, Donald Trump’s teams handed 15 boxes of documents he took when he left the White House to the National Archives, which is responsible for recording presidential activities for history.
After examining these boxes, the FBI, convinced that the ex-president had kept other secret documents in Florida, under potentially inappropriate circumstances, decided to search, and on this occasion seized about thirty more boxes of documents.
The procedural document published on Friday places, between two sections crossed out in black, a partial inventory of these files received in February that alarmed the federal police: 184 classified documents, including 25 marked “top secret,” the highest grade. of secrecy. .
secret agents
Particularly striking: some of these documents included the “HCS” label, which identifies in the language of the US intelligence community information provided by “human sources”, informants and other covert agents.
Several documents carried “what appeared to be handwritten notes” from Donald Trump, according to the Federal Police, which revealed that in some cases the files found were “mixed with other files.”
The Justice Department concluded in a letter to Donald Trump’s attorney published Friday that these highly sensitive archives were “not appropriately managed and not properly stored.”
Agents searched the Mar-a-Lago mansion – 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms – on August 8, angering the former president and his supporters.
In the face of criticism, the Minister of Justice asserted that he “personally agreed” to the inspection.
Then a federal judge ordered US authorities to release the 38-page document made public on Friday, while agreeing to a request that entire passages be redacted in order to protect the investigation.
In his reaction on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a “witch hunt,” as well as a “com stunt.”
“We live in a country without religion or law,” he exasperated shortly before.
Investigators suspect that the Republican violated the US Espionage Act, which strictly regulates the possession of classified documents. Donald Trump assured him that the documents had been declassified.
“Let’s go well!”
Joe Biden responded sarcastically on Friday when asked about this argument from his predecessor.
“Let the Department of Justice deal with this,” the Democratic president said, declining to make further comment on the document revealed Friday.
Upon leaving for his family’s home in Delaware, Joe Biden indicated that he was carrying classified documents. But he emphasized that he had a “totally safe space” in the house, and detailed the procedure: The document is “locked. I have someone with me, soldier. I read it, lock it again, and give it to a soldier.”
Donald Trump is also the target of investigations into his efforts to nullify the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
And the Republican who flirts with the idea of running for the presidential elections of 2024 has not yet been tried in any way.
