United States: top secret documents at Trump's house justified the FBI search
Donald Trump assured that the documents recovered by the police had all been declassified.
AP - Julia Nikhinson
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
It was the presence of extremely confidential documents in boxes recovered from Donald Trump that prompted the search of the American federal police (FBI) in the residence of the former president, reveals a court document published on Friday.
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This procedural document, written before the search of August 8 in order to obtain authorization, explains the reasons why the federal investigators considered this police operation necessary, absolutely unprecedented for a former president and at the origin of a political storm.
The US Department of Justice, forced into this disclosure by a judge, redacted a very large part of it in order to protect the investigation.
The procedural document published on Friday draws up, between two passages crossed out in black, a partial inventory of these files received in February, which alarmed the federal police: 184 classified documents, including 25 marked "Top Secret", the highest degree of confidentiality.
Particularly striking: some of these documents carried the sign “HCS”, which in the language of the American intelligence community designates information provided by “human sources”, informants and other undercover agents.
Several documents bore "
what appeared to be handwritten notes
" from Donald Trump, according to the federal police, which reveals that the files found were in some cases "
mixed with other files
".
These very sensitive archives had "
not been managed appropriately nor (were) stored in an appropriate place
", concluded the Department of Justice, in a letter to Donald Trump's lawyers made public on Friday.
"
Witch Hunt
"
Reacting on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a "
witch hunt
", as well as a "
com subterfuge
".
"
We live in a country without faith or law
", he was indignant shortly before.
In February, Donald Trump's teams handed over 15 boxes of documents he had taken when he left the White House to the national archives agency, responsible for recording presidential activities for history.
It was after examining these boxes that the FBI, convinced that the former president kept other classified documents in Florida, under potentially inappropriate conditions, decided to search, seizing on this occasion about thirty other boxes of documents. .
Agents searched Mar-a-Lago's home on August 8, infuriating the former president and his supporters.
Faced with criticism, the Minister of Justice assured that he had "personally approved" the search.
A federal judge then ordered US authorities to publish the 38-page document made public on Friday, while granting the request to redact entire passages in order to protect the investigations.
(with AFP)
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