Law enforcement officials have justified the unprecedented crackdown on the former US President by releasing new details about the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s home. The Justice Department in Washington released parts of Document “102-1” on Friday, on the basis of a judge’s order, on the basis of which the searches in Trump’s private home Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach were approved three weeks ago.
Among other things, it provides information about the FBI’s initial suspicions against the Republican – and shows which secret documents were still stored at Trump’s home.
The Authorized Inside Story of His First White House Years (Anzeige)
According to this, 14 of 15 boxes with documents that Trump had previously sent from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives contained confidential and sometimes even top secret documents. 184 documents were classified – 67 as “confidential”, 92 as “secret” and 25 as “top secret”. According to the FBI, the documents classified as secret were found among other papers such as magazine articles and photos – some with handwritten notes. There was reason to believe that there were other classified documents on the property.
In fact, the investigators then discovered other secret documents in Trump’s Florida club. Information about top secret human sources of the US services abroad (“clandestine human sources”) was stored there. Trump also had files lying around that contained information about the methods used by the services for electronic surveillance abroad (“monitoring of foreign communications signals”), as reported by “Spiegel”. Usually, according to the rules, such documents must be stored in secure, specially certified locations. That was not the case, according to the FBI, at Trump’s Florida club, where many people come and go.
A judge in the state of Florida ordered the partial publication of the paper on Thursday – because of the great public interest. Several media had applied for publication in court. About half of the 30+ pages have been blacked out to protect sensitive information.