TOP SECRET AND CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FOUND BY FBI IN SEARCH OF TRUMP’S FLORIDA HOME

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Judge weighs unsealing redacted affidavit to show justification for granting search warrant

By Elijah McKee and Miriam Raftery

August 18, 2022 (Washington D.C.) – Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) removed over 20 containers including 11 sets of classified documents during a search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on August 8. Trump’s removal of documents from the White House and his handling of top secret information has potentially serious national security implications, as well as potential criminal liability, though thus far Trump has not been charged with any crime.

A property receipt made public this week  reveals that the documents found by the FBI include four sets marked “top secret,” three sets of “secret” documents, three “confidential” sets, and one set of “top secret and sensitive compartmented information (TS/SCI). The latter is a category that even some people with top secret clearance cannot access, such as nuclear secrets and details on U.S. intelligence gathering operations overseas.

“People who work in the national security sector at any level know that they should not keep documents labeled TS/SCI,” said Mark Zaid, an attorney specializing in national security, National Public Radio (NPR) reports.

The search was conducted lawfully after the FBI obtained a search warrant, which authorized confiscation of “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed in violation of 18 U.S.C. 793, 2071, or 1519.”

18 U.S.C. § 793 is the 1917 Espionage Act.  Intended to combat spying, it restricts possession of national defense information, regardless of classified status, and can be punished by up to 10 years in prison.  The has been used in recent years against leakers of military and national security secrets, including Edward Snowden, former military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Laws  2071 and 1519 further protect official U.S. documents from concealment, tampering, and destruction. 2071 can result in three years in prison, and 1519 in 20 years. Neither one stipulates that such material must be classified.

There is also a law that prohibits removal of classified documents to an unauthorized location. In fact, Trump bolstered the punishment of this law while in office from one to five years. While this law was not cited in the warrant, potential charges under this law could also be possible.

Presidents and others are prohibited from taking home classified materials, and when presidents leave office, they are required to return all government property.

The federal government had already made numerous efforts to recover the classified documents, but Trump failed to comply.  The National Archives and Records Administration is responsible for ensuring proper transfer of all governmental property whenever a president leaves office. The Archives asked for the return of documents improperly removed form the White House and Trump’s attorney reported that all items had been returned.  With items still  missing, the Archives asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate and the DOJ obtained a search warrant.

The warrant and property receipt have been made public, a rare occurrence in an ongoing investigation. Trump disclosed the search himself and did not object to the unsealing of warrant materials.

Today, in the latest churn of the wake created by the search, the judge who signed the original search warrant ordered the DOJ to prepare a redacted version of the lengthy affidavit that explains the justification for the search.  

Judge Bruce E. Reinhart, the Florida judge presiding over the matter, will consider whether to unseal the redacted version and make it publicly available in response to requests from news organizations.  The DOJ has objected to its release, since it could contain national security details, names of witnesses or whistleblowers, targets of a criminal probe, and other sensitive information. It could also have a chilling effect on other witnesses considering coming forward. Trump's lawyer was present, but did not seek to block release of the affidavit's contents. The DOJ also revealed that the search found evidence of obstructon at Mar-a-Lago and that unsealing the affidavit could lead to more obstruction.

The FBI has provided only general descriptions of the classified levels of most documents, due to their sensitive and secretive nature. However some details were released; the documents included a presidential grant of clemency for Trump ally Roger Stone, and unspecified information about the president of France.

The Washington Post has cited multiple anonymous sources who reportedly said that classified documents related to nuclear weapons were among the items sought by the FBI.  This has not been confirmed, though release of a redacted affidavit could clarify this matter. Nor do we know whether or not the FBI found any nuclear-related documents.

Trump claimed his social media platform Truth Social, “They didn’t need to seize anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar a Lago.” 

The FBI did not break in; the agency had a warrant lawfully obtained from a court.  Trump had failed to turn over the classified materials despite multiple requests including the issuing of a subpoena for him to do so.

Trump has alternately claimed that the FBI “planted” documents and contradictorily, that he had a blanket order in the White House to declassify any documents that he took home while president.

CNN however, contacted 18 former top Trump administration officials who all confirmed that no such order existed. Collectively those officials spanned the entire tenure of Trump’s presidency.

“Nothing approaching an order that foolish was ever given,” John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff from 2017-19 told CNN.  He added that anyone at the White House would not have allowed such an order “without dying in the ditch trying to stop it.”

Another senior White House official told CNN Trump’s claim was “total nonsense,” adding, “If that’s true, where is the order with his signature on it?”

David Laudman, former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence division, explained that declassification must include reviews by agencies such as the CIA, NSA, Department of Energy, State Department and Defense Department..  There is “no evidence” that any officials at those agencies were notified of a declassification proposal by Trump. “It can’t be just in his head,” Laudman told CNN.

Attorney General Merrick Garland discussed the warrant and search in a speech on August 11. “The department does not take such a decision lightly,” he stated. “Where possible, it is standard practice to seek less intrusive means as an alternative to a search, and to narrowly scope any search that is undertaken.”

Garland made clear that there was a reason for the search, and that the federal agents involved acted  properly under probable cause.

He also condemned the backlash the FBI has received including an attempted attack on an FBI building in Cincinnati in which the attacker was killed and a threat to release a dirty (nuclear) bomb in front of the FBI’s Washington D.C. headquarters, NPR reported.

Hateful rhetoric has been spinning off Trump’s social media platform; Trump and some GOP supporters have been vocal in casting the search as  “prosecutorial misconduct” and a political maneuver given that Trump has voiced his ambitions to run for the presidency again in 2024. 

The investigation into the classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is just one of several state and federal investigations the President is facing, including a criminal inquiry in Georgia over Trump pressuring election officials to alter election results and a civil probe in New York into whether  Trump and his family’s real estate business fraudulently inflated values of his hotels, golf courses and other properties to obtain favorable loans.  

Today, Allen Weisselberg, Chief Financial Officer for Trump’s family business, pleaded guilty in a New York court to conspiring with Trump’s company to commit 15 felony crimes, Associated Press reports.  Weisselberg  struck a deal with prosecutors that could make him a star witness against the company at a trial this fall. Trump has called the case a political “witch hunt.”

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 



 

 


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Comments

The CIA celebrates

its 75th birthday tomorrow! Yes, why not. It's the agency famous for torturing innocent people, which Obama supposedly put an end to. Plus one observer has written that the CIA has been “tasked with tracking and suppressing any political, economic, military processes in all parts of the planet that could threaten the world hegemony of the United States and its allies.” . . .which is thankfully ending.

Breaking news: Trump had nuke secrets on a foreign power

Washington Post just broke this story:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/06/trump-nuclea...

Is there anyone who really thinks foreign nuclear secrets should be left lying around an unsecured location?  If this is true, it's some of the most sensitive classified material that the U.S. has. I fail to see how they could NOT indict over this. How can they ever prosecute anyone for illegal possession of top secret documents again if they don't hold Trump accountable for this theft of top secret documents?  Nor has Trump even bothered to explain why he took these and other classified documents. If there was a benign explanation, he surely would have released it by now.

Breaking news: So what

"A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents" according to the anti-Trump Washington Post. . . . Maybe it's true but so what. . . .Actually details of any government's (except Israel) foreign government’s military defenses including its nuclear capabilities usually are, and should be, common knowledge. Why should it be a secret? We need to know these things. The whole idea of "we need to hide things from citizens" is simply a wrongful symbol of the mistaken idea that "we're in the government and you're not, so we can do things secretly because you're too stupid to understand important stuff.". .That is not democracy, governance by the people via their representatives. But then, we don't have democracy, do we.

There are 18 US intel agencies

who regularly display their ineffectiveness -- e.g. WMD in Iraq (not) -- with thousands of spies, over 50,000 of them in the CIA and NSA combined. So nothing would change if a couple agents got bumped off. Simple to avoid that, do what I do every night, go under cover. :-)

Trump not charged.

That pretty much sums up all the B.S. in a nut shell. If there was ANYTHING, any single tiny thing to charge him with THEY WOULD HAVE HAPPILY CHARGED HIM BY NOW. This hatred of President Trump is so sickening. The man did everything and more he promised he would do. He secured our borders. Kept us out of all wars, beefed up our depleted ARMED SERVICES. Created Space Force. Created Peace in the Middle East. Made every country RESPECT our country by being a strong leader and negotiator. Those that hate him are brainwashed by the DNC MEDIA. They only hear the lies and disinformation spewed 24/7 from these so called news channels. I have personally listened to the hateful and one sided news from ALL of those channels. It is disgusting and so sad what has happened to our ONCE NEWS CHANNELS. There is no such thing As unbiased news anymore. We all know it. NEWS IS A THING OF THE PAST. DEMOCRATS ARE A THING OF THE PAST TOO. What once was a party for the people has now become a party for themselves. MONEY HUNGRY AND POLITICALLY HUNGRY. I grew up a believer of the democrat party. I’m now 75 years old and realized that THE DEMOCRAT party is NO MORE. Trump is and was the first president since Ronald Reagan who truly cared about ALL THE PEOPLE and our glorious country. He made us totally independent of other countries. We certainly didn’t beg other countries for their dirty gas. Ours was the cleanest. When Biden signed away all that Trump had accomplished it made me sick. NOW LOOK WHAT HE HAS DONE TO THE PEOPLE AND OUR COUNTRY. Somehow, someway there are people like yourself and the Santee no bacon posts who are blinded to the truth. I’ve written you before about you bias towards Trump. It is not your job as a REPORTER, to write the untruths and or comment to those of us who DISAGREE with your posts and so called News Articles. One thing is certain! You are not a reporter. Everything Trump has regarding papers were DECLASSIFIED before he left the Whitehouse. That was his presidential duty. I’m more determined NOW more then ever to VOTE STRAIGHT REPUBLICAN. I hope those who read this will agree and do the same. God Bless America and God Bless President Trump.

There are obviously things he can be charge with.

The law does not provide any legal reason for taking classified documents, let alone top secret ones.   The FBI generally follows a policy of not indicting politicians within 3 months of an election  to avoid the appearance that they are trying to sway an election outcome.  FrogLady, you are ignorant of the laws and White House procedures. Even Trump's White House staffers and his own Attorney General, Bill Barr, have said that he did NOT declassify those documents and COULD NOT have done so. There is a requirement for presidents who wish to declassify documents to go through certain steps, including review by the intelligence agencies, who can opt to prevent some documents from being declassified. This was not done.  There is no record he signed any order to even begin that process, nor is there a single staffer with any recollection of him even trying to declassify anything. Why do you believe anything he says, even when all the evidence points to the opposite?  As a reporter who has won hundreds of major journalism awards, my obligation is to report truth. If evidence had surfaced that he actually had declassifiied any of those documents, we would have published it. No such evidence exists and his claim has been thoroughly debunked.  Trump is undermining democracy and seeking to discredit media that reports the truth about him -- a common tactic among authoritarians who do not respect the will of the people or the rule of law.

It's crazy

Those of us who have been involved in classified documents knows how ridiculous the situation is, with its greatly abused practices. , . from the LA Times: In 2017 alone, officials told the ISOO that they had stamped something with “confidential,” “secret” or “top secret” more than 49 million times. At the time, this seemed like an improvement. In 2012, similar self-reported data added up to more than 95 million classifications, or three new state secrets per second. Bradley now says that a lot of the data in these earlier reports “was neither accurate nor reliable,” but cannot offer better estimates. . . . "Top Secret" shall be applied to information, the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security that the original classification authority is able to identify or describe.. . .Wow, grave damage to national security? Would that involve an attack by Canada? Mexico? Would it be a highway map to be used in an offensive attack from the north or south?. . .It's crazy abused. . .and let's not forget Hillary's practice of sending and receiving classified documents on her household device, while she was cooking up the lies about "collusion" with the help of the politicized FBI.

I'll grant you that some low-level documents may not be

That important. But the court documents show that Trump had the highest level of classified documents, Top Secret and Compartmentalized, which customarily is only reserved for secrets about our intelligence gather that could put the lives of spies at risk, or possibly  nuclear secrets.  I can't see any legiitmate reason for a former president to take those and to refuse many requests to return them, can you?

 

 

I suggest

that you cut Miriam some slack. She has a point of view, and she allows readers who have a different view to state their beliefs. That liberty is becoming more rare on the internet. I've been doing this for years, and the options are much less now. I've been banned on some sites, and a lot of sites now just don't allow responses while they publish their wrong information. . . .Miriam has the right to free speech especially on her own site, and since she allows others to say what they think we should be thankful for that and we shouldn't get nasty because she has views that we may not agree with.

Hillary as SecState illegally got away with

a private insecure server in her basement with thousands of unsecured classified documents which she got away with. She didn't use State Department computers as required by law. Then she destroyed the documents spite of a Congress order to preserve them, and went on (with the politicized FBI) to finance the fake dossier on Trump's (nonexistent) Russia collusion. . . . Now (yet again) it's dump on Trump time, with a politicized FBI on the loose again without a legal basis.

no bacon

you are not correct. crawl back into your tRump world and keep drinking the cool-aid. this was investigated and closed by a tRump person......https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system

It's unraveling

The Start of the Unraveling of the Trump Mar A Lago Raid -- Donald Trump is having a very good week, notwithstanding the flood of negative stories from the Deep State media. It started with the Judge releasing the sealed search warrant and the affidavit that provided the predicate for the search. Now, it is true most of the substance was blacked out, but the documents revealed that this operation was done at the behest of the Washington Field Office. . .Well guess what? The head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, Tim Thibault, was removed forcibly from his office by other FBI agents last Friday. That news just broke today. It comes in tandem with other news that some of the documents taken from President Trump’s residence were covered by Attorney/Client privilege. The FBI violated Mr. Trump’s Constitutional Rights. Or, to be specific, FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Washington Field Office, Tim Thibault, violated Mr. Trump’s rights. - - from sonar21 dot com

sorry bacon

wrong again, but keep trying that tRump cool-aid must taste very good!!!

No, the FBI didn't violate his rights.

The FBI had a filter team screening the materials in the search and pulling out anyting that appeared to be attorney-client privilegem the Washingotn Post reports . https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/29/trumpspecial...  The FBI had obtained a lawful search warrant, only after Trump repeatedly refused to return the materials he'd stolen. The warrant was granted on very serious and legitimate grounds -- namely many documents classified at the highest possible security level had been taken and were, in fact, found during the search. These are documents with information that could endanger lives of U.S. intelligence agents.  People have gone to prison for taking far lower levels of classified documents.

Nobody, including a former president, has the right to take such materials - there is no legitimate reason for him to have them, and they were left in unsecured areas where others at Mar a Lago could have potentially accessed htem.

When?

When are they going to go after Hillary or Hunter?

Neither one of them was president,

and neither of them had the highest level top secret, compartmentalized classified documents (disclosure of which could result in deaths of our spies in the intelligence services).  

throw the bums out

keep drinking the tRump cool-aid. it shows.............

Amusing about US "intelligence"

The U.S. intelligence gathering operations overseas are noteworthy for their inability to get any facts straight, like the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan for example. Anyhow the real top secret in Washington is the buying of congress-critters to do what the corporations want done.