(Washington) 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.
Posted at 12:37 p.m.
Updated at 5:20 p.m.
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.
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. .
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.
secret agents
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” from Donald Trump, according to the federal police, which reveals that the files found were in some cases “mixed with other files”.
These highly sensitive archives had “not been properly managed or [n’étaient] stored in an appropriate place, ”concluded the Department of Justice, in a letter to Donald Trump’s lawyers made public on Friday.
Agents searched Mar-a-Lago’s home – 58 bedrooms and 33 bathrooms – on August 8, angering 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.
Reacting on Friday, Donald Trump again denounced on his Truth Social network a “witch hunt”, as well as a “com subterfuge”.
“We live in a country without faith or law”, he was indignant shortly before.
Investigators suspect the Republican of having violated an American law on espionage which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured him that these documents had been declassified.
“Come on good! »
“Come on good! “Reacted a sarcastic Joe Biden on Friday, when asked about this argument from his predecessor.
“Let the Justice Department handle this,” the Democratic president said, declining to comment further on the document revealed Friday.
On leaving for his family residence in Delaware, Joe Biden indicated that he was carrying classified documents. But he stressed that he had “a completely secure space” at home, and detailed the procedure: the document “is locked. I have someone with me, a soldier. I read it, lock it again, and give it to the soldier. »
Donald Trump is also the target of investigations into his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in the assault by his supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
The Republican, who flirts with the idea of a candidacy for the presidential election of 2024, is not yet prosecuted in any case.