New Report Reveals What Donald Trump Kept Mixed In With Top-Secret Documents
Every day seems to bring new — and intriguing — details about the FBI raid on Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. A now-viral photo from the Department of Justice (DOJ) shows a startling number of classified documents, many with cover sheets marked "TOP SECRET." Some had the additional marking "SCI," indicating the papers include highly sensitive intelligence information. The DOJ's filing to the federal court also points out that the documents had no markings to indicate that they had been declassified, per Bloomberg News.
In response, the former president filed a suit in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Florida, requesting a neutral party known as a "special master." The special master would be permitted to go over the seized documents and determine whether the DOJ can use them in its obstruction of justice case against Trump (via CNBC). Although the Florida judge has not yet ruled on that request, she did unseal the inventory of items the FBI took from the Trump resort.
Now all eyes are on that property inventory since it was made public on September 2. Although the long list doesn't provide identifying details about the documents, new concerns are being raised about what was in the boxes taken from Trump's office and storage room. Random magazines, books, and press clippings were found side-by-side with the top-secret papers — and so were some even more unexpected items.
Clothes, books, and gifts were stored next to classified documents
The official inventory list of items retrieved from Mar-a-Lago is raising even more eyebrows. Item No. 1, "Documents from Office," is a combination of two "US Government Documents/Photographs without Classification Markings" and one "US Government Document with SECRET Classification Markings." The other items tell a similar story: Documents marked "CONFIDENTIAL," "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET" are mixed in with empty folders "with CLASSIFIED banners," as well as random magazines and newspapers. The papers missing from the folders at Mar-a-Lago might be even more concerning than the ones that were found, according to some officials.
In Donald Trump's storage room, more folders of sensitive information were stored in boxes alongside various unidentified "gifts" and/or "articles of clothing." As The Washington Post explains, this could potentially constitute a breach of conduct on Trump's part. American presidents are not permitted to accept gifts valued at more than $415 from foreign officials (via U.S. General Services Administration). Presumably, Trump would have to return any gifts that violated the policy.
While Trump's spokesperson is spinning the eclectic list as proof that the FBI conducted "a SMASH AND GRAB" rather than a carefully curated search, other experts disagree. Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton told CBS News, "In most offices, you would have a very clear segregation of the sensitive classified material locked in safes handled very carefully versus all the unclassified material. This to me is more evidence that Donald Trump didn't give much attention to the sensitivity of the classified information."