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.
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 of Donald Trump, according to the federal police, who reveal that the files found were in some cases “ mixed with other files “. These highly sensitive archives had ” not been appropriately managed nor (were) stored in an appropriate place “, concluded the Department of Justice, in a letter to Donald Trump’s lawyers made public on Friday.
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Reacting on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a “ witch hunt “, and a ” com subterfuge “. ” We live in a lawless country “, he had been 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)