“Top Secret” Documents Seized During Donald Trump’s Home Search

First modification: 08/13/2022 – 13:37

A promise is a promise. In the face of attacks from the Republican camp against the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday, in a rare televised appearance, that the warrant used in the search would be made public. “Not only will I not oppose the publication of the documents (…) but I will go further and ENCOURAGE their immediate publication,” Donald Trump wrote then, although he had refrained from making public the copy of the order that he had received.

This Friday, a Florida judge not only published this order, but also a long inventory of documents seized by FBI agents at the billionaire’s residence in Florida. In total, about twenty boxes with documents, some of them classified, photo albums and the handwritten letter by which Donald Trump had granted his presidential pardon to his former partner Roger Stone. The list also includes a set of documents relating to the “President of France”, without further details. The former White House tenant said in a statement Friday that the documents recovered by police had all been declassified.

The law requires US presidents to transmit all their emails, letters and other business documents to the US National Archives. When Donald Trump left the White House in January 2021, he took fifteen boxes of documents, which the Archive’s agents had to recover in January, already at Mar-a-Lago.

Monday’s search was the first directed at a former US president. Outraged, Donald Trump told Truth Social that day that his attorneys were “fully” cooperating with authorities when “suddenly and without warning, Mar-a-Lago was raided at 6:30 in the morning by a number VERY large number of agents.” Specifically, he complained that FBI agents had “searched the wardrobe of the first lady” Melania Trump. On Wednesday, he even suggested that the federal police may have “planted” false evidence against him in the operation.

Following the registration, Republican leaders rallied around their former president, who retains a strong hold on the Conservative Party and plans to run for president again in 2024. Republican supporters, known for their support of the forces of order, they criticized the intervention of the FBI, to the point that an association of agents denounced “unacceptable calls (…) to violence against the police”. The Attorney General also denounced “unfounded attacks” on his department and the federal police. On Thursday, a gunman who tried to break into the FBI offices in Ohio (northern United States) was killed by law enforcement after a long standoff.

(with agencies)