A member of the Secret Service is seen in front of former President Donald Trump’s home at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida on August 9, 2022.
Giorgio Viera | AFP | beautiful pictures
The FBI seized several sets of documents marked as top secret from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago vacation home when agents raided on Monday, according to a search warrant obtained by NBC News.
The order directs agents to seize “all material documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, crime results, or other items illegally possessed” in violation of three related laws. to government document processing.
Read the revised search warrant here
The subpoena shows Trump is being investigated for potential charges of espionage and obstruction of justice. Convictions under these statutes can result in fines or prison sentences.
Follow letter of the law.
Eleven sets of classified documents were among those seized during the raid, according to a list of what was taken from the warrant. A file group marked “Differently classified/TS/SCI documents,” includes the abbreviation for top secret/sensitive classified information.
The rest are four sets of top secret documents, three sets of classified documents and three sets of classified documents.
Agents took at least 20 boxes of items, along with photo stickers, a handwritten note and “executive leniency” for Roger Stone, a Republican political agent. whom Trump pardonedaccording to NBC documents.
Information about the French president is also on the list of excluded from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump and his lawyers have argued that the president declassified the documents before the end of his term. Trump, who has criticized the Justice Department since he first revealed the raid on Monday night, has argued that his team has cooperated with the administration.
A spokesperson for Trump did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The report on the search warrant and related documents came hours before U.S. District Court Judge Bruce Reinhart agreed to annul the search warrant. The DOJ had told Reinhart shortly before that Trump had no objection to that disclosure.
The FBI is searching for nuclear documents in Trump’s home, among other items, The Washington Post reported on Thursdaycited people familiar with the investigation.
Minister of Justice Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department would apply to the court to make the search warrant public, in the “substantial interest of the public in this matter.”
Garland also noted that he personally approved the order, condemning the wave of FBI and DOJ attacks following Trump’s announcement of the raid.
Trump, in apparent defense of the charges against him, announced on social media that former President Barack Obama “keeps 33 million pages of documents, most of which have been classified,” after leaving office. department.
The National Archives and Records Administration appeared to deny his claim, explaining that those pages of records were unclassified and moved to a facility in Chicago “where they are maintained exclusively by NARA.”
“Obama has no control over where and how NARA maintains Presidential records about its administration,” NARA said.
But Trump repeated the claim in a later statement, asserting that the records at Mar-a-Lago were “all declassified.”
“They don’t need to ‘seize’ anything,” reads the statement sent by Trump’s office. “They can have it anytime they want without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It’s kept safe, with an additional padlock at their request.”
Read the edited search warrant:
This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.
