The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida home in Florida this week recovered 11 sets of classified documents including some marked “top secret”.
The United States Justice Department said this in a statement on Friday, August 12, while also disclosing it has probable cause to believe he violated the Espionage Act, according to New York Times.
The bombshell disclosures were made in legal documents released four days after FBI agents carried out the search of Trump’s residence based on a warrant approved by a federal magistrate judge.
The Justice Department told US Magistrate Judge, Bruce Reinhart in its warrant application that it had probable cause to believe that Trump violated the Espionage Act, a federal law that prohibits the possession or transmission of national defense information.
“The list of documents is contained in a seven-page document that also includes the warrant to search the premises that was granted to the FBI by US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart. The list did not provide any more details about the substance of the documents,” the statement reads.
The reported revelations that Trump had documents labeled “top secret” could create major legal jeopardy for him. Top secret is the highest level of classification, reserved for the country’s most closely held national security information. It is usually kept in special government facilities because its disclosure could cause grave damage to national security.
Numerous federal laws prohibit the mishandling of classified material, including the Espionage Act as well as another statute that prohibits the unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material. Trump increased the penalties for this while he was in office, making it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
Earlier on Friday, Trump denied a report that the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago home was for possible classified materials related to nuclear weapons, writing on his social media account that the “nuclear weapons issue is a hoax.”
Monday’s search of Trump’s home marked a significant escalation in one of the many federal and state investigations he is facing from his time in office and in private business, including a separate one by the Justice Department into a failed bid by Trump’s allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election by submitting phony slates of electors.
Attorney General, Merrick Garland has declined to publicly detail the nature of the investigation.
Garland on Thursday announced that the department had asked Reinhart to unseal the warrant that authorized the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. This followed a claim by Trump that the search was political retribution and a suggestion by him, without evidence, that the FBI may have planted evidence against him.
Trump’s attorneys on Friday afternoon signaled they will not object to having the search warrant for his Florida residence unsealed to the public, the Justice Department said in a court filing, indicating the unsealing could come shortly.
Reinhart had imposed a 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT) deadline for prosecutors to let him know if Trump’s legal team will oppose the unsealing of the warrant.
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