At the beginning of August, the residence of Mar-a-Lago (Florida) of the former American president, was raided by the FBI. More than 11,000 government documents, some classified top secret, that Donald Trump failed to return after leaving the White House, ohave been seized. Among them, information on military forces and nuclear capabilities of a foreign countryrevealed the Washington Post on Wednesday.
According to former US intelligence officials, the house is therefore an obvious target for foreign intelligence services. “I know national security professionals in government, my former colleagues, are shaking their heads at the damage that could have been done.”said John Brennan, former director of the CIA, at MSNBC. “I’m sure that Mar-a-Lago was the target of Russian intelligence and other intelligence for the past 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get any individuals into that house , and to access the rooms where these documents were and to make copies of them, that is what they would have done.”
“All foreign intelligence services, be it those belonging to China, Iran, or Russia certainly were interested in access to Mar-a-Lago”Peter Strzok, former deputy director of counterintelligence at the FBI, told MSNBC.
A month ago, Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a group of investigative journalists, revealed that a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine mingled with Donald Trump’s family and friends at Mar-a-Lago, posing as Anna de Rothschild, a heir to the banking dynasty. It was in fact, Inna Yashchyshyn, daughter of a truck driver who emigrated to Canada, linked to fraudulent companies. The young woman had even met the former president in person, attests a photograph of them on a golf green.
There’s no evidence that she was a spy, but this episode highlighted just how easily Mar-a-Lago can be broken into. During Donald Trump’s presidency, two Chinese women were caught breaking into the Palm Beach house on several occasions.
One of them, Yujing Zhang, was in possession of several mobile phones, a laptop, an external hard drive and a USB key which was later found to contain malware. In his hotel room, investigators had found nine USB keys, five SIM cards and a “signal detector” device to locate hidden microphones or cameras. She was charged with making false statements and trespassing on a secure site and convicted of unlawfully entering a building with restricted access and was deported to China in 2021.