Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence recovered 11 sets of classified documents, including details on French President Emmanuel Macron.
Some of the files were marked top secret and meant to be viewed only in special government facilities, The Wall Street Journal, which reviewed records before an FBI search warrant was unsealed on Friday afternoon.
A three-page list spelling out the items taken from the home stated there was information on the ‘President of France’. It also had a seven-page document with the search warrant granted by a Florida federal magistrate judge for the unannounced raid on Monday.
In all, the FBI apparently removed about 20 boxes with a handwritten note, binders of photographs and the executive grant of clemency for Trump’s ally and conservative political consultant Roger Stone.
The list referred to one set of records labeled ‘Various classified/TS/SCI documents’, which means top-secret/sensitive compartmented information.
Agents apparently also confiscated four sets of top secret records, three sets of secret material and three sets of confidential papers. No further details on the documents were listed.
Shortly after the report, Trump started ranting anew on his Truth Social platform.
‘Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to “seize” anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request…’ Trump wrote on Friday afternoon.
‘…They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK.’
Trump also lashed out at his predecessor, calling him ‘President Barack Hussein Obama’, a seeming reference to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Trump claimed that Obama ‘kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified’.
‘How many of them pertained to nuclear?’ Trump wrote. ‘Word is, lots!’
Trump was hitting at a Washington Post report on Tuesday that the FBI was searching for classified nuclear documents during the raid. On Friday morning, Trump called the ‘nuclear weapons issue a Hoax’.
Trump’s attorneys argue that he used his authority as president to declassify the material he took when he left the White House. A president can declassify documents, but there are federal guidelines for doing so.
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