Foreign government’s nuclear secrets found in Trump raid: Report

Top secret documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort have horrified intel experts. See why.

A foreign government’s nuclear secrets were reportedly among the files seized in the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida last month.

The documents detailed a foreign government’s military defences and nuclear capabilities and can only be viewed by a select group of top officials, The Washington Post reports, citing sources “familiar with the search”.

The country and its government described in the highly sensitive documents was not revealed by the sources.

Documents pertaining to such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance.

Those especially sensitive records should have been kept under lock and key in a secure compound with a control officer keeping tabs on them, not in the former president’s private club under unknown security more than 18 months after Mr Trump left the White House, according to the article.

Former US President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP.

Shawn Turner, former director of communications for US national intelligence, said the claim is “a gamechanger with regard to the risk it poses to our national security.”

“That these documents may have been seen by unauthorised personnel … tells individuals what our capabilities are with regard to intelligence collection related to nuclear programs,” Mr Turner told CNN’s New Day.

“More important is it identifies or exposes our gaps with regard to intelligence collection.

“The bottom line is others are going to look at this information and determine what we know and don’t know, and they’re going to make decisions about their nuclear programs based on that information. And that is an extremely dangerous thing.”

The disclosure was published one day after Mr Trump’s legal team won a request to have a “special master” independently review material seized from his mansion over his lawyers’ concerns the authorities would “impugn, leak, and publicise select aspects of their investigation”.

Documents at former US President Donald Trump's Florida home. Picture: US Department of Justice.

Florida Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon on Monday approved Mr Trump’s motion to appoint a special master “to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of lawyer client and/or executive privilege”.

The ruling came as a blow to prosecutors, who had opposed Mr Trump’s motion, arguing it had already completed a review of the boxloads of documents.

The order also temporarily prohibits prosecutors from reviewing and using the seized materials pending the completion of the review.

“In addition to being deprived of potentially significant personal documents, which alone creates a real harm, plaintiff faces an unquantifiable potential harm by way of improper disclosure of sensitive information to the public,” the judge wrote in her ruling.

Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr Trump in 2020, said in her order that some of the seized materials included “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes and accounting information.”

The legal fight between the former US President and the Department of Justice escalated on Friday morning when the DOJ released a detailed inventory of the documents seized from his Florida home.

‘ENEMY OF THE STATE’

Making his first public appearance since the dramatic raid on his home, Mr Trump on Saturday said it was a “travesty of justice” and warned it would produce “a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

“There can be no more vivid example of the very real threats from American freedom than just a few weeks ago, you saw, when we witnessed one of the most shocking abuses of power by any administration in American history,” Mr Trump said.

His suggestion that the Biden administration had overseen the raid goes against longstanding protocols which see the Justice Department and the FBI act independently of the White House.

Mr Trump told cheering supporters at the rally in the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania that the “egregious abuse of the law” was going to produce “a backlash the likes of which nobody has ever seen.”

He also hit back at Mr Biden’s speech this week in which the president said his predecessor and Republican supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

Former US President Donald Trump arrives to speak during a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP.

Speaking in Philadelphia, the cradle of US democracy, the current US president launched an extraordinary assault on those Republicans who embrace Mr Trump’s “Make America Great Again” ideology – and urged his own supporters to fight back in what he billed as a “battle for the Soul of the Nation.”

Mr Trump slammed it as the “most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”

“He’s an enemy of the state. You want to know that,” Mr Trump said. “Republicans in the MAGA movement are not the ones trying to undermine our democracy,” he continued.

“We are the ones trying to save our democracy, very simple. The danger to democracy comes from the radical left, not from the right,” he added.

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene waves during a rally with former US President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Picture: AFP.

Mr Trump was appearing in Pennsylvania to rally support from Republicans ahead of November’s midterm elections, which could see Mr Biden’s Democrats lose control of both houses of Congress.

It comes as Mr Trump is under increasing legal pressure over the documents found by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The Justice Department has said in court filings that highly classified government documents, including some marked “Top Secret,” were discovered in Mr Trump’s personal office during the raid.

A detailed list of what was seized also showed Mr Trump held on to more than 11,000 unclassified government records that he claims are his to keep – but legally are owned by the National Archives.

Among the papers seized were 18 documents labelled “top secret”, 53 labelled “secret” and another 31 marked “confidential.”

Of those, seven top secret files, 17 secret files and three confidential files were retrieved from Mr Trump’s private office.

Agents also found several dozen empty folders labelled “classified” in the office, raising speculation that sensitive documents may have been lost, destroyed or moved.

Originally published as Foreign government’s nuclear secrets found in Trump raid: Report