It’s a 38-page document released this Friday, August 26 shortly after 12 p.m. local time. American justice has unveiled a long text setting out the reasons for the recent search by the federal police (FBI) at the Florida home of former President Donald Trump, but the content largely redacted in the interest of the investigation.
Federal Judge Bruce Reinhart had ordered the Department of Justice to release this key document, supposed to detail the reasons which led to the investigation of Donald Trump, citing public interest in the unprecedented search of the home of a former president. American. But the magistrate had accepted the ministry’s request to redact important parts of the document – which could otherwise have revealed the identity of certain actors in the case – in the name of a “compelling” need to protect the investigations. The authorities had opposed the publication of said document, arguing that it would require a redaction “so extensive that the rest of the leaked text would be devoid of any significant content”.
On August 8, the FBI raided Donald Trump’s residence in Florida, Mar-a-Lago, seizing boxes of confidential documents that the Republican had not returned after leaving the White House, despite multiple requests.
The document released on Friday indicates that the investigations began when the National Archives Agency (NARA) informed the Ministry of Justice, on February 9, 2022, of having received from Donald Trump’s teams, 15 boxes of documents containing in particular, according to NARA, “top secret documents”. The federal police then opened an investigation aimed at determining “among other things, how the classified documents had left the White House (…) and had been stored” in the Mar-a-Lago club. “The document published this Friday is disastrous for Donald Trump. It demonstrates a desire to trample the law and an incomprehensible negligence, which could have put the lives of members of the secret services in danger”, relates on Twitter Jean-Eric Branaa, master of lectures at the University of Paris-II-Panthéon-Assas and specialist in the United States.
“The amateurs and thugs of politics”
The ex-real estate magnate had again assured this Friday on his Truth Social network, before the publication of these court documents, that “political amateurs and thugs had no right (…) to take storming Mar-a-Lago and stealing anything that came within their reach”. “We live in a country without faith or law,” he was indignant.
On Monday August 22, the former American president had asked that an independent expert be appointed to examine the documents seized by the FBI and determine which could be kept “confidential” and thus not be used in the investigations. The list of items seized by the FBI, already made public, mentions many documents classified as “top secret”. The whole question is to know what these documents deal with.
Investigators suspect the Republican of having violated an American law on espionage which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured that these documents had been declassified. Donald Trump, who flirts with the idea of a candidacy for the presidential election of 2024, has long castigated this search, which he sees as the illustration of a “witch hunt” targeting him. He is currently not being prosecuted in any case.