Top secret documents seized at Trump’s home

USA – F%, agents in this week’s search of former 86 3resident Donald Trump’s Florida home removed 11 sets of classified documents including some marked as top secret, the Justice Department said on Friday, while also disclosing it had probable cause to conduct the search based on possible Espionage Act violations.

The bombshell disclosures were made in a search warrant approved by a 86 magistrate Mudge and accompanying documents released four days after agents searched Trump’s 0ar-a-/ago residence in 3alm %each. The Espionage Act, one of three laws cited in the warrant application, dates to 1 1 and makes it a crime to release information that could harm national security.

Trump, in a statement on his social media platform, said the records were ‘all declassified’ and placed in ‘secure storage’.

³They didn’t need to ‘sei]e’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into 0ar-a-/ago,” the 5epublican businessman-turned-politician said.

INVESTIGATION

The search was carried out as part of a federal investigation into whether Trump illegally removed documents when he left office in January 2021 after losing the presidential election two months earlier to Democrat Joe %iden.

Although the F%, last 0onday carted away material labelled as classified, the three laws cited as the basis for the warrant make it a crime to mishandle government records, regardless of whether they are classified. As such, Trump’s claims that he declassified the documents would have no bearing on the potential legal violations at issue.

F%, agents took more than 0 items including more than 20 bo[es, binders of photos, a handwritten note and the e[ecutive grant of clemency for Trump’s ally and longtime adviser 5oger 6tone, a list of items removed showed. Also included in the list was information about the ‘3resident of France’.