The document has been redacted, but it offers the most detailed description yet of the confidential files that Donald Trump did not return after leaving the White House. The American justice published, Friday August 26, a legal document of 38 pages explaining the reasons for the recent search of the federal police (FBI) at the home of the former American president, in Florida.
Without delivering explosive revelations due to the many redacted passages, this pleading offers insight into how Donald Trump kept potentially confidential documents at his home in Mar-a-Lago – and the concern aroused by his apparent recklessness at the authorities.
184 classified documents
The investigators were particularly concerned about the maintenance in an unsecured room of potentially top secret documents, even which could endanger American intelligence agents undercover.
The document shows that the investigations began when the National Archives Agency (NARA) informed the Department of Justice on February 9, 2022 that it had received fifteen boxes of documents from Donald Trump’s teams. Some contained, according to NARA, “top secret documents”.
The investigation then opened by the federal police made it possible to confirm that these boxes contained 184 classified documents, including twenty-five top secrets, and led the investigators to believe that “other documents containing top secret national defense information” were still present at Mar-a-Lago.
However, these very sensitive archives had no “not appropriately managed [et n’étaient pas] stored in an appropriate place”, details an excerpt from a letter from the Department of Justice to Donald Trump’s lawyers, quoted in the report published 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.
Protecting “civilian witnesses”
Federal Judge Bruce Reinhart had ordered the Department of Justice to make public this key document, supposed to detail the reasons which led to the investigation of Donald Trump, citing the public interest in the unprecedented search of the home of a former American head of state.
The magistrate had accepted the ministry’s request to redact important parts of the document – which would otherwise have revealed the identity of certain actors in the case – in the name of a need “imperious” to protect the investigations. On Friday, Justice Ministry officials also highlighted the need to “to protect the security and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses”.
The authorities waited until the last minute. They had opposed the publication of the said document, arguing that it would require a redaction “so important that the rest of the leaked text would be devoid of any significant content”.
“Witch hunt”, according to Trump
Reacting to the publication on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a ” witch hunt “and a “com subterfuge”noting that these court documents did not mention ” nothing “ 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.
On Monday, the former US president called for an independent expert to be appointed to review the documents seized by the FBI and determine which ones might remain “confidential” and thus not be used in investigations.
The list of items seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago, already made public, also mentioned numerous classified documents “top-secret”. The whole question is to know what these documents deal with, and the elements published on Friday do not provide details on this point.
Investigators suspect the Republican of having violated an American law on espionage which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured him that these documents had been declassified. He is currently not being prosecuted in any case.