Former US President Trump has criticized the FBI raid in Florida as politically motivated. The list of confiscated items now shows that the FBI found top-secret documents in the Trump estate that had no business there.
In the Search of former US President Donald Trump’s Florida home has the federal police FBI several top secret documents confiscated. This emerges from the receipt of the confiscated items, which a court in the US state Florida released along with the search warrant on August 12, 2022 at the request of US Attorney General Merrick Garland.
FBI finds top secret documents in Trump mansion – ex-president denies
Trump had previously written on the social network Truth Social, which he co-founded, that all documents had been released, so the secrecy had been lifted.
According to the FBI list, agents last Monday found a set of Top Secret/SCI documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which are top secret and can only be viewed at special government facilities. Four of the confiscated sets of documents were classified as “Top Secret”, three more as “Secret” and the remaining three as “Confidential”. The “Washington Post” reported that the FBI was also looking for classified documents about nuclear weapons. Trump denied this and described the report on Friday as a “hoax”.
Did the FBI find nuclear weapons classified documents on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago?
According to the list, the agents also confiscated numerous boxes, a pardon for Trump confidante Roger Stone, unspecified information about the “President of France” and two photo albums. The papers that have now been published say nothing about the content of the documents.
Donald Trump could be accused of violating the US espionage law
The search warrant lists three criminal offenses as possible basis for any seizure: collecting, transmitting or losing defense information, removing or destroying official documents, and destroying or altering documents to hamper investigations. The first count – which falls under the US Espionage Act – carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, the second up to three years and the third up to 20 years.
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Donald Trump rages after FBI raid on private club
Attorney General Garland stressed on Thursday that the presumption of innocence applies. At the same time, he underlined that a federal court had authorized the search “after the necessary determination of sufficient suspicion”. “I personally endorsed the decision to seek a search warrant.” Trump had sharply criticized the operation and the government of his successor Joe Biden accused of using the FBI for political purposes.
According to the White House, Biden did not know in advance about the search of the Trump property. The process is considered unprecedented in US history. Trump was not at his property during the search, but had made the search public himself.
The receipt for property seized in the execution of an FBI search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
Bild: picture alliance/dpa/AP | Jon Elswick
Garland justified the request for publication of the search warrant and the receipt, among other things, with the public interest. Trump had also requested publication. However, he would have been free to publish the papers himself.
US National Archives Contradict Trump’s Unfounded Claim About Obama Documents
The US National Archives, which is responsible for storing presidential documents, meanwhile contradicted Trump’s claim that his predecessor Barack Obama kept secret documents after his departure. According to the legal requirements, after Obama left office in 2017, the National Archives “assumed the exclusive legal and physical custody of the Obama presidential records,” the state institution said. About 30 million pages of non-classified documents are kept in the Chicago area. Classified information would be held in Washington.
Trump wrote on Truth Social on Friday that had the authorities asked him about it, he would have given them all the documents. “The bigger problem is what are they going to do with the 33 million pages of documents, many classified, that President Obama took with him to Chicago?” he wrote in the same message. Trump had previously made the same claim without providing any supporting evidence.
In general, the truthfulness of Trump’s statements is disputed. The Washington Post fact checkers had proven Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements during his four-year term from 2017 to 2021.
Donald Trump turned over boxes of confidential documents before FBI search
At the beginning of the year it became known that the National Archives suspected several boxes with confidential material in Mar-a-Lago. Trump finally handed over several documents to the agency in January. After that, according to US media reports, there was a further exchange between investigators and Trump’s lawyers. Officials suspected that Trump or his team were continuing to withhold important documents, the Washington Post wrote, citing anonymous sources.
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