Without delivering explosive revelations due to the many cockpit passages, this procedural act offers an overview of the way Donald Trump kept potentially top secret documents at his home in Mar-A-Lago.
Le Monde with AP and AFP
The document has been expternal, but it offers the most detailed description to date of the confidential files that Donald Trump had not returned after leaving the White House. American justice published, Friday, August 26, a 38 -page judicial document exhibiting 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 cockshafts, this procedural act offers an overview of the way Donald Trump kept potentially confidential documents at his home in Mar-A-Lago-and the concern aroused by its apparent imprudence among the authorities.
184 classified documents
Investigators were concerned in particular with the maintenance in an unsecured room of potentially top secret documents, or even being able to endanger American information agents under cover.
The document shows that the investigations started when the National Archives Agency (Nara) informed the Ministry of Justice on February 9, 2022, having received fifteen boxes of documents from Donald Trump teams. Some contained, according to the Nara, “top secret documents”.
The investigation then opened by the federal police confirmed that these boxes contained 184 classified documents, including twenty-five top secrets, and led investigators to believe that “other documents containing top secret information national defense “were still present in Mar-A-Lago.
Now these very sensitive archives had “not been managed appropriately [and were not] stored in an appropriate place”, details an extract from a letter from the Ministry of Justice to the lawyers of Donald Trump, quoted in the report published on Friday. On August 8, the FBI therefore searched Donald Trump’s residence, entering around thirty new boxes containing confidential documents.
protect “civilian witnesses”
The Federal Judge Bruce Reinhart had imposed on the Ministry of Justice to make this key document public, supposed to detail the reasons which led to investigate Donald Trump, citing the interest of the public for the unprecedented search of the domicile of ‘A former American head of state.
The magistrate had accepted the ministry’s request to caviarize important parts of the document – which could, if not, could reveal the identity of certain actors in the file – in the name of an “imperative” need to protect the investigations. Friday, officials of the Ministry of Justice also highlighted the need to “protect the security and privacy of a large 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 cavitation “so important that the rest of the disclosed 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”, as well as a “subterfuge of com”, noting that these court documents did not mention “nothing” Potential documents relating to “nuclear” mentioned for a time in the American press. “We live in a country without faith or law,” he was indignant.
Monday, the former American president had asked that an independent expert be appointed to examine the documents seized by the FBI and determine which one could remain “confidential” and thus not be used in surveys.
The list of articles seized by the FBI in Mar-A-Lago, already made public, also mentioned many documents classified “Top Secret”. The whole question is 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 supervises the detention of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured that these documents had been declassified. He is not currently pursued in any case.