Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained documents with classification markings, including at the top secret level, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday explaining the justification for this month’s search of the property.
The 32-page affidavit, even in its heavily redacted form, offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property long after he left the White House and reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally.
“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” an FBI agent wrote on the first page of the affidavit in seeking a judge’s permission for a warrant to search the property.
The affidavit does not provide new details about the 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago but instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from the home in January.
In those boxes, according to the affidavit, officials located 184 documents bearing classification markings, including 25 documents marked as top secret. Agents who inspected the boxes found markings related to information provided by confidential human sources as well as information related to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Taken together, the affidavit reveals additional details about an ongoing criminal investigation that has brought fresh legal peril for Trump just as he lays the groundwork for another presidential run. It also shows in stark detail the volume of sensitive government documents that were stored at Mar-a-Lago instead of being turned over to the National Archives.
The FBI submitted the affidavit, or sworn statement, to a judge so it could obtain the warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out the justification for why they want to search a particular property and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there.
In a separate document unsealed Friday, Justice Department officials explained that it was necessary to redact some information to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”
Affidavits routinely remain sealed during pending investigations, making the decision by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to reveal portions of it all the more striking.
In an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit. The directive came hours after federal law enforcement officials submitted under seal the portions of the affidavit that they wanted to keep secret as their investigation moves forward.
Documents previously made public show the FBI retrieved from the property 11 sets of classified documents, including information marked at the top secret level. They also show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of three federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
It’s possible that the affidavit, particularly in its unredacted form, could shed light on key unanswered questions, including why sensitive presidential documents — classified documents, among them — were transported to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left the White House and why Trump and his representatives did not supply the entire tranche of material to the National Archives and Records Administration despite repeated entreaties.
It could also offer additional details on the back-and-forth between Trump and the FBI, including a subpoena for documents that was issued last spring, as well as a June visit by FBI and Justice Department officials to assess how the materials were being stored.
The Justice Department had earlier contested arguments by media organizations to make the affidavit public, saying any disclosure could contain private information about witnesses and about investigative tactics. But Reinhart, acknowledging the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, said last week that he was disinclined to keep the entire document sealed and told federal officials to submit to him in private the redactions it wanted to make.
In his order Thursday, Reinhart said the department had made compelling arguments to leave sealed broad swaths of the document that, if disclosed, would reveal grand jury information; the identities of witnesses and “uncharged parties”; and details about the investigation’s “strategy, direction, scope, sources and methods.”
But he also said he was satisfied “that the Government has met its burden of showing that its proposed redactions are narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation and are the least onerous alternative to sealing the entire Affidavit.”
(AP)
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8 Responses
No surprises here. Did anyone really think the names of confidential informants would be revealed or that classified, confidential, secret and top secret info would be released to the public?
I don’t even bother with this anymore. They don’t want him to run in 2024. So the attacks won’t end. It’s best to just ignore the Dems
The lefty radical socialist are taking over. The middle class will fall apart. We could still save our country by voting Republican down the line.
Yeridat hadorot: national archivist cannot spell improper, and FBI agent cannot spell FBI investigation. All they know is how to black out things. They quote Trump’s argument that classification law doesn’t apply to him, but their response is too sensitive to show!? Did they spy information in their legal brief?
Why did Trump have top secret classified documents at Mar a Largo after his term ended? Even if as he claims they were declassified they are not his to remove from government offices. Some of the documents had information on sources in foreign nations whose lives would be endangered if revealed.
The affidavit is clearly based on legal conclusions that were being disputed and had yet to have been resolved by a judge. As long as ownership and classification status of the papers was being litigated, there was no basis for a criminal search warrant. At most the government should have asked the judge for an injunction to secure the papers during the course of litigation. The FBI and the National Archives (both executive branch agencies) apparently decided that they, rather than the courts, get to decide what the law is, and then go to a magistrate and in secret they falsely claim that certain papers were stolen (rather than taken by authority of the then president) and are state secrets (even though the then president declassified them). The FBI officials and their informants should be prosecuted, and the head of the Justice Department should resign.
This trampling of civil rights has become “standard procedure” in recent years, and one hopes that the Republicans along with the Progressive Democrats (who have been loudly complaining about abuses in the criminal justice system, including the use of dubious affidavits to support unconstitutional searches), will get together and put and end to this “police state” approach to law enforcement. IF a rich and well connected person like Trump have his rights trampled, what about the rest of us (just ask Breonna Taylor)?
Even if he can show the documents were properly “declassified”, there is NO legal argument that he can simply load up anything he wants in a U-haul and shlep them to an unsecure location in Florida. Just think about the absolute stupidity of his argument. On the morning of January 20th he decided in his head to “declassify” all the details and protocols of launching a nuclear attack and the list of targets and just put them in some cartons, took them to Florida and stored them in a storage room below the bar at Mar a Lago because as “declassified documents” they no longer required a secure storage facility. No wonder he cannot find a competent attorney to argue his case.
akuperma , doesn’t the Presidential records act make it clear that the documents are government property and should be in the National Archives? Is there any doubt of that?