The FBI found a confidential document about another country’s nuclear weapons at Trump’s house in Florida | International

The FBI found a document describing a foreign country’s defense capabilities, including its nuclear weapons, at former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida on August 8, the US newspaper revealed on Wednesday. The Washington Post. The newspaper cites sources familiar with the judicial investigation against the former president for obstruction of justice and theft of confidential documents, among other serious chargesyes The newspaper does not specify which state the report refers to, nor does it indicate whether the country is hostile to the United States or an ally. On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon effectively paralyzed the investigation against Trump by prohibiting the government from using the documents found during that search until they had been reviewed by an independent expert, as the former president’s lawyers had requested.

The secret document whose discovery the newspaper reports is part of the lot that, according to the FBI, Trump and his team tried to hide after removing them from the White House in 2021, at the end of the former president’s term, in that 126-room mansion. Some of them were simple newspaper clippings but others detailed top secret US operations. Those papers had such a high level of confidentiality that, the newspaper specifies, even part of the national security personnel of the Joe Biden Administration is not authorized to consult you.

Reports on such highly secret operations require special authorizations for viewing and some of them can only be read by a small group of people. These papers are kept under lock and key, in a room with strong security measures and in the custody of a control officer appointed to carefully monitor their location and control who accesses their content. Only the president and some members of his cabinet can authorize other officials to read them.

Washington Post considers that the discovery of that document on the nuclear capabilities of another state in the Trump residence confirms the concern of the US intelligence services about the classified material that was supposedly hidden in Mar-a-Lago. The FBI believes that the secret reports allegedly taken by Trump’s team were stored in that mansion in “uncertain” security conditions more than 18 months after the former president left the White House, the newspaper stresses.

After months of trying and only after launching a legal case against Trump for that reason, according to government court documents, the FBI recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January and another 38 turned over by a Trump attorney to investigators on June 3. That day, three FBI agents and a prosecutor went to the house in Mar-a-Lago to receive a folder with other official documents supposedly recently found. Members of the former president’s legal team led the investigators to a storage room, where, they were told, other administration papers were stored. According to the State Department, Trump’s lawyers “explicitly prohibited” agents from opening other boxes that were there to check what was inside. They also stated that there were no more official documents in other rooms of the residence.

That June visit made the FBI think that the Trump team had not returned everything that the National Archives claimed, so the Prosecutor’s Office asked a federal court to authorize a search of the house in Mar-a-Lago, on 8 August, whose results confirmed that suspicion. The FBI then recovered another 33 boxes of evidence, as well as other containers containing more than 100 additional documents discovered in the search.

“a hoax”

It was in this latest batch of recovered government secrets, said the sources – who spoke with Washington Post under condition of anonymity—where the information on the nuclear defense of a foreign government was found.

This Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump to the position she occupies in the federal court in South Florida, prohibited the Government from continuing to use those documents in its investigation until the independent expert had reviewed them, as they had requested by Trump’s lawyers. The main consequence is that the investigation is stopped by the judicial decision. The investigators can continue their investigations on other fronts, but not with the seized material.

Washington Post It had previously reported that FBI agents who searched Trump’s home were looking, in part, for classified documents related to nuclear weapons. After the information was published, Trump compared it on social media to other government investigations of him, which he called “a hoax.”

“The issue of nuclear weapons is a hoax, just like Russia. Russia was a hoax. The two political trials were a hoax. Mueller’s investigation was a hoax and more. Same sleazy people involved,” he wrote, going on to suggest that FBI agents may have left false evidence against her at his home.

The US government has asked Trump’s team on several occasions if he took classified documents from the White House in 2021 at the end of his term. The former president’s entourage has repeatedly responded with evasiveness.

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