Trump kept 25 ‘top secret’ documents at Florida home
Ex-President’s handwriting scrawled over missing files
DONALD TRUMP’s handwriting was found scrawled on secret documents kept at his private estate in Florida, it emerged yesterday.
The former US President had marked up ‘several’ of the 184 sensitive files scattered around the Mar-a-Lago resort including in an unsecured storage room.
The revelation came in court papers filed to justify an FBI search of the property earlier this month.
The extraordinary step has raised the prospect of Mr Trump being criminally charged with mishandling sensitive information, possibly even nuclear secrets.
The affidavit was very heavily redacted, leading to further claims of corruption from Mr Trump’s supporters. On his social media account
Mr Trump said: ‘Affidavit heavily redacted!!! Nothing mentioned on “nuclear,” a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DoJ [Department of Justice].’
The papers included intelligence material gleaned from ‘clandestine human sources’ and were marked not to be given to foreign governments without permission.
Some 25 of the documents carried the most sensitive ‘Top Secret’ designation. Another 92 were marked ‘Secret’. Mr Trump handed over the papers to the National Archives in January, sparking questions as to why they had been taken from the White House to Florida. On June 8 a DoJ lawyer told a Trump attorney that ‘Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorised for the storage of classified information’.
The documents had been kept in a storage room in the basement with no lock, in Mr Trump’s suite, in an area called Pine Hall, in his office and in other spaces. The lawyer said the documents had ‘not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location’.
Mr Trump’s lawyers told the DoJ that he had ‘absolute authority to declassify documents’ and warned prosecutors not to engage in a political attack.
Justifying the August 8 raid, the FBI said in the affidavit it suspected more classified documents were being kept illegally at Mar-a-Lago and there was ‘probable cause obstruction will be found’ there. A judge approved the request and the search took place. It is not clear what was seized.
Another document released by the FBI called for the identity of witnesses to be protected ‘to ensure their safety’. Mr Trump’s inner circle strongly suspect a mole helped investigators and this appears to confirm that theory.
He is suing the US government over the search and has asked the judge overseeing the case to appoint an independent arbiter to review the documents. However the affidavit notes that it doesn’t matter whether the files were classified because prosecutors could argue there had been a breach of national defence.
Mr Trump posted his response on Truth Social because he has been banned from Twitter. His ‘nuclear’ comment appeared to be a reference to a report in the Washington Post that suggested some of the material related to nuclear secrets.
‘Public relations subterfuge’