US justice released a court document on Friday setting out the reasons for the recent federal police (FBI) search of the Florida home of former President Donald Trump, but the content largely redacted in the interest of the investigation.
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Without delivering explosive revelations due to the many redacted passages, this pleading offers a glimpse of how Donald Trump kept potentially highly confidential documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago – and the concern aroused by his apparent recklessness on the part of the authorities.
The investigators were particularly concerned about the maintenance in an unsecured room of potentially top secret documents, even which could endanger American intelligence agents under cover.
The document made public explains that the investigations began after the National Archives Agency (NARA), responsible for recording presidential activities, indicated in February to the Ministry of Justice that it had received, from Donald Trump’s teams, 15 boxes of documents including “top secret documents”.
The investigation then opened by the federal police confirmed that these boxes contained 184 classified documents, including 25 top-secret, and led the investigators to believe that “other documents containing top-secret national defense information” were always present at Mar-a-Lago.
The problem: these very sensitive archives had “not been managed appropriately nor (were) stored in an appropriate place”, details an excerpt from a letter from the Ministry of Justice to Donald Trump’s lawyers quoted in the report released on Friday.
On August 8, the FBI had therefore searched the residence of Donald Trump, seizing around thirty new boxes containing in particular confidential documents.
Public interest
During the operation, officers searched 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms, according to the search warrant, angering supporters of the former president.
Faced with the political storm, the Minister of Justice had to give a very rare press conference and ensure that he had “personally approved” the search.
Citing the great public interest in this unprecedented search of the home of a former American president, federal judge Bruce Reinhart then imposed on the ministry to release the documents made public on Friday.
But the magistrate accepted the authorities’ request to redact important parts of the document – which could otherwise have revealed the identity of certain actors in the case – in the name of a “compelling” need to protect the investigations.
Authorities waited until the last minute Friday to comply, releasing the 38-page document shortly after 12 p.m., the deadline set by Judge Reinhart.
They had once opposed the publication of the said document, arguing that it would require a redaction “so extensive that the rest of the leaked text would be devoid of any significant content”.
«Subterfuge»
Reacting to the publication on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a “witch hunt”, as well as a “subterfuge of com”, noting that these court documents did not mention “anything” of the potential documents relating to the “nuclear” mentioned for a time in the American press.
“We live in a country without faith or law,” he was indignant shortly before.
On Monday, the former US president had asked that an independent expert be appointed to examine the documents seized by the FBI and determine which could be kept “confidential” and thus not be used in the investigations.
The list of items seized by the FBI, already made public, mentions many documents classified as “top secret”. The whole question is to know what these documents deal with.
Investigators suspect the Republican of having violated an American law on espionage which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured that these documents had been declassified.
Donald Trump is also under investigation into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in his supporters’ assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Donald Trump, who flirts with the idea of a candidacy for the presidential election of 2024, has long castigated this search, which he sees as the illustration of a “witch hunt” targeting him.
He is currently not being prosecuted in any case.