More than a hundred documents classified as confidential, secret and top secret were seized among the 33 boxes the FBI recovered from Mar-a-Lago, the Florida residence of Donald Trump, during the search carried out on August 8. .
Posted at 12:11 p.m.
This is revealed by the complete inventory (8 pages) of the boxes made public Friday morning by the American court for the Southern District of Florida. The inventory also revealed the extent of the clutter of these boxes where confidential documents stood alongside simple newspaper articles.
This is the case, for example, of box number two, the content of which is 99 newspaper and magazine articles published between January 2017 and October 2018 with two confidential documents, 15 secret documents, 7 top secret documents, 69 documents and photos unclassified, 43 empty folders with a “classified” mark and 28 empty folders with the mark “to be returned to military personnel and aides”.
Note that no specific details are revealed on the content of the “classified” documents and that there are many more documents without than with classification.
According to the inventory, seven of the 33 boxes were recovered directly from the office of the former President of the United States. The rest was in a warehouse at his club.
The publication of this inventory follows a request from Mr. Trump’s lawyers who are calling for the intervention of a third party to do a more thorough examination and determine whether their client had executive privilege over them.
PHOTO JON ELSWICK, ASSOCIATED PRESS
An example of the inventory pages made public Friday morning relating to the boxes seized at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022.
Earlier this week, one of Mr. Trump’s attorneys compared the whole saga to a bickering over books being returned late to the library.
On Friday morning, Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the lifting of the ban on inventorying the boxes, but did not rule on whether such a third party would intervene.
In favor of the Democrats
Without commenting on the legal aspect of this new development, Rafael Jacob, associate researcher at the Raoul-Dandurand chair indicated that on the political aspect, it is “clearly to the advantage of the democrats”.
“Politically, it keeps history alive. But she would have stayed that way no matter what the judge decides on that specific issue, he said. And this is very clearly to the advantage of the Democrats. Whenever there is talk of inappropriate, potentially illegal behavior by Donald Trump, it pushes independent voters away from the Republican Party. Every day we talk about Donald Trump, we don’t talk about Joe Biden. Every day we talk about Mar-a-Lago, we don’t talk about other problems, such as inflation, which are hurting the American administration. »
Separately, Jacob said that even if Republicans regain control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections on Tuesday, Nov. 8, the Justice Department’s work on this file will continue.
“Republicans can put public and political pressure on the Justice Department. How ? For example, by issuing subpoenas on orders to appear or orders to provide documents to Congress. But the Department of Justice falls under the executive branch, hence the presidency. »
On the other hand, the Republicans, if they regain control of Congress, could put an end to the Commission of January 6 which is investigating the attack on Capitol Hill by supporters of Donald Trump refusing to recognize the results of the presidential election of November 2020.