The FBI seized classified records — some marked top secret — from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to court documents unsealed Friday.
The list of information seized includes materials labeled with “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” which refers to top-secret and sensitive compartmented information. That’s a government label for material gathered through sensitive intelligence sources, methods or analytical processes. The items were taken during the execution of a search warrant signed by a Florida judge.
Prosecutors said they were searching for evidence of violations of three specific federal criminal laws: 18 USC 793, which is part of Espionage Act and makes it a crime to remove or misuse information related to national defense; 18 USC 2071, which makes it a crime to hide, damage, or destroy government records; and 18 USC 1519, which makes it a crime to falsify, destroy, or cover up records to obstruct or interfere with a federal investigation or “proper administration of any matter” under the jurisdiction of an agency.
The judge authorized agents to gather any documents with classification markings as well as information about how “national defense information or classified material” had been stored and handled. The judge also gave agents leeway to collect any other government records created between the day Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017 and when he left four years later that might be evidence of violations of the Espionage Act or other document-related crimes under investigation.
Included in the materials removed from Trump’s home Monday were 11 sets of documents labeled classified, confidential, secret and top secret included in about 20 boxes. Other items listed included a handwritten note, the executive clemency grant for Trump confidante Roger Stone, photos, and information about the “President of France.”
An FBI property receipt didn’t elaborate on the nature of the classified files. But taken together, the warrant and the receipt gave a glimpse of the DOJ’s rationale in searching the home of a former president — a step that provoked outrage from Trump and his allies and alarm among national-security specialists that national secrets had been left at risk of exposure.
In an effort to calm the outcry from Trump allies about the search of the Florida compound, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday asked a judge to unseal the warrant. Trump said in a posting on social media Thursday night that he supported the release of the documents. On Friday, he issued a statement saying that the information was declassified.
“Number one, it was all declassified,” Trump said. “Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request.”
Some of the former president’s supporters have claimed he has the power to declassify documents on his own. While a president can request or initiate a declassification, the original classifying agency “must undergo a process to complete the declassification,” according to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade.
The search warrant says the FBI sought access to “the 45 Office” — Trump being the 45th president — in addition to storage rooms and other areas on the premises used by Trump and his staff in which boxes or documents could be stored. They didn’t request access to any private guest rooms of members of the golf club.
“This could be information about intercepted communications,” John Bellinger, a partner at Arnold & Porter who was legal adviser to the National Security Council under George W. Bush, said in an interview with David Westin on Bloomberg Radio. “That’s very, very tightly controlled. If Trump took some of that off with him to Mar-a-Lago, he could declassify it, but it would certainly look bad if he tried to do it.”
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said the records were ordinary or declassified. A representative for the Justice Department didn’t immediately reply to a message seeking comment.
“The Biden administration is in obvious damage control after their botched raid where they seized the President’s picture books, a ‘hand written note,’ and declassified documents,” Budowich said in a statement. “This raid of President Trump’s home was not just unprecedented, but unnecessary—and now they are leaking lies and innuendos to try to explain away the weaponization of government against their dominant political opponent.”
Ryan Goodman, professor of law at New York University, said that the Espionage Act is the “most serious federal offense anyone can imagine.” There are limits to what the president can do unilaterally and this “signals an order of magnitude even above what the president can do alone,” said Goodman.
“It raises the stakes enormously in terms of the pending criminal investigation,” he said.
