Donald Trump is under investigation after the FBI retrieved highly confidential and classified documents from his Florida property.
The former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate was raided on Monday as federal agents carried out a search warrant to look for documents that Trump allegedly took with him when he left the White House.
Newly unsealed records have since revealed that the feds retrieved 11 sets of classified documents from the estate. Some of the seized documents were marked as ‘secret,’ ‘top secret,’ and ‘confidential.’
Along with the seized classified documents, the agents also retrieved a series of handwritten notes, photo binders, and a file containing info about the President of France.
A total of 20 boxes were seized in the raid.
It is currently unclear what the seized documents pertained to. Government sources, however, told Newsweek that the FBI was after “Top Secret and compartmented” docs related to intelligence “sources and methods.”
The publication also revealed that compartmented documents would entitle “classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes, which is required to be handled within formal access control systems established by the Director of National Intelligence.”
An investigation into Trump has since been launched to determine whether he violated the Espionage Act either by disclosing classified information or gathering and transmitting defense information.
Following the raid, however, Trump’s lawyers were quick to downplay the FBI’s discovery saying all of the seized documents were declassified by the former president before he left the White House.
While presidents can declassify all documents including those marked as top secret, a strict federal procedure must be followed when doing so.
“Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said on Friday as he called the raid unnecessary.
“It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request. They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.”
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