Top secret documents seized during FBI search of Donald Trump's home

Europe 1 with AFP 11:59 p.m., August 12, 2022

US federal police, the FBI, seized "top secret" documents during their search of former President Donald Trump's home in a possible violation of the Espionage Act, according to court documents released Friday.

Investigators suspect the Republican, with the illegal possession of classified documents, of having violated a US espionage law.

Several court documents were released Friday by a Florida judge: the warrant authorizing the search, before it was conducted, and a long inventory of the documents seized Monday by FBI agents.

In this list is mentioned a set of documents concerning the "president of France", without further details.

An unusual request welcomed by Trump

The operation, conducted in Donald Trump's residence in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, had provoked the fury of his supporters evoking a "political persecution", as well as many Republican tenors.

Thursday, the Minister of Justice Merrick Garland had, in an exceptional speech, asked that a judge make public this warrant authorizing the search so that his reasons are known to all.

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This request - very unusual - had been favorably received by Donald Trump.

"Not only will I not oppose the publication of the documents (...) but I will go further by ENCOURAGING their immediate publication", wrote Thursday evening the billionaire, who had nevertheless refrained from making the copy public. of the mandate he had received.

The ex-president assured in a press release on Friday that the documents recovered by the police had all been declassified.

The Minister of Justice approved this search

Thursday, during his brief televised address, Merrick Garland assured to have "personally approved" this search.

"The ministry does not take this kind of decision lightly," said the Minister of Justice, adding that the case was of "important public interest", three months before the mid-term legislative elections.

The law obliges the American presidents to transmit all their e-mails, letters and other working documents to the American National Archives.

However, Donald Trump had taken, when he left the White House in January 2021, fifteen boxes of documents, which agents from the Archives had to recover in January, already at Mar-a-Lago.

Monday's search was the first ever to target a former US president.

Outraged, Donald Trump told Truth Social on Monday that his lawyers were cooperating "fully" with the authorities when "suddenly and without warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided, at 6:30 a.m., by a VERY large number of agents" .

He complained in particular that FBI agents "searched the closets of First Lady" Melania Trump.

On Wednesday, he even suggested that the federal police may have "placed" false evidence against him during this operation.

Republicans slam FBI intervention

Republican sympathizers, though known for their support for law enforcement, castigated the intervention of the FBI, so much so that an association of agents denounced calls "unacceptable (...) to violence against the police".

The Minister of Justice also reported "unfounded attacks" against his ministry and federal police officers.

Thursday, a gunman who had tried to enter FBI offices in Ohio (north of the United States) was killed by the police after a long confrontation.

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After the search, the Republican tenors had united with their former president, who retains a strong hold on the conservative party and plans to be a presidential candidate again in 2024. The ex-real estate magnate, at the heart of judicial news in the United States, was also submitted on Wednesday to a sworn hearing before the Attorney General of New York, who is investigating in civil court suspicions of financial tax fraud within the Trump Organization family group.

He then repeatedly invoked his right not to answer questions under the 5th Amendment of the Constitution.