The Justice Department on Friday unsealed the FBI affidavit justifying the unprecedented search of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. Here are top take-aways of what the document revealed.
The Justice Department on Friday unsealed the FBI affidavit justifying the unprecedented search of former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
Federal investigators knew months before the search that Trump had been storing top secret government records at Mar-a-Lago, a private club accessible not only to Trump, his staff and his family, but paying members and their guests, along with a revolving door of attendees at various functions, including weddings, paid political fundraisers and charity galas.
The Archives referred the matter to the Justice Department on Feb. 9 after a preliminary review of the boxes found what they described as "a lot of classified records."Agents who inspected the boxes found special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic "signals" authorized by a court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
"It appears, based on the affidavit unsealed this morning, that among the improperly handled documents at Mar-a-Lago were some of our most sensitive intelligence," Warner said.Some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives. A president might be given raw intelligence reporting to supplement his briefings or to cover a breaking or critically important matter, said David Priess, a former CIA officer and White House briefer who wrote "The President's Book of Secrets," a history of the President's Daily Brief.
A lengthy process to retrieve the documents had been underway essentially since Trump left the White House. The document states that, on or about May 6, 2021, the Archives made a request for the missing records "and continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021" when it was informed 12 boxes were found and ready for retrieval from the club.
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