The FBI reportedly seized documents from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home that contained highly confidential intelligence regarding Iran and China, according to The Washington Post on Friday.
People with knowledge of the situation told the Post that if the contents of the documents were made public, it might reveal US intelligence-gathering techniques. A few of the documents discuss China’s highly sensitive intelligence while others describe Iran’s missile development.
The Post’s sources described the retrieved documents as some of the FBI’s most sensitive since it started looking into whether the former President and his aides may have improperly handled secret information.
On Friday morning, the Post contacted a Trump spokeswoman for comment, but they did not respond right away.
Many of the more sensitive documents sent to the resort, according to those with knowledge of the situation who talked with the Post, are analytical papers that do not name sources but nonetheless offer information to foes abroad. Only the most senior members of the US government, such the President or Cabinet members, have access to certain of the materials.
According to AWN, the US intelligence community has resumed work on the classification review and the alleged damage assessment connected to Trump’s holding of sensitive data at Mar-a-Lago since the FBI search in August.
The damage assessment is a long-term analytical product that will examine the harm to US national security that would result from the exposure of the material housed at Mar-a-Lago. Each document will be examined to ensure that its classification markings are up to date as part of the classification review process.
The Justice Department has demanded that all sensitive government records be returned, and sources told AWN that Trump’s legal team is considering whether to permit federal agents to go back to the former President’s Florida home and possibly conduct a supervised search to meet this demand.
The Justice Department has made it apparent that it believes Trump disobeyed a May subpoena ordering the return of all papers marked as confidential and that more government records are still missing in both private conversations with Trump’s team and court filings.
After the FBI took roughly 22,000 pages during the August search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, several members of Trump’s inner circle aren’t sure there are any more federal records.
