On Friday, the US Department of Justice published the grounds for the home search conducted in early August.
The grounds are presented in a 34-page affidavit. In it, the FBI explained to a federal judge why the search should be conducted. Most of the statement is still classified.
The new information still sheds more light on why the FBI conducted an extraordinary search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on August 8.
What is the investigation about?
The FBI is investigating whether Trump and his team broke the law when they took documents with them from the White House after the presidency ends in January 2021.
By law, all documents produced by the president must be turned over to the US National Archives.
Mar-a-Lago also lacked proper facilities to store top-secret documents. The risk was that they would fall into the hands of spies.
How did the investigation begin?
In January, Trump handed over 15 boxes of material to the National Archives after a long struggle.
According to the grounds for the search, there were 67 confidential, 92 secret and 25 top secret documents in the boxes, among newspapers, photographs and other junk.
Among them were documents related to national defense and, among other things, information about the personal data sources of the intelligence services. The spread of information could put the employees of the intelligence services at risk.
The National Archives reported the documents to the FBI in February, which opened an investigation. It began to suspect that there were still secret documents left at Mar-a-Lago.
How serious is the job search for Trump?
The crimes suspected by the FBI are serious.
So far, no one has been charged. The investigation will continue by reviewing the results of the house search and interviewing possible witnesses.
Trump has denied the crimes and blames the Justice Department and the president Joe Biden from the political chase. He claims to have declassified all documents.