Inventory of over 11,000 documents in Donald Trump Mar-a-Lago raid revealed — including 18 marked ‘TOP SECRET’
Investigators at Donald Trump’s estate found dozens of folders marked secret or classified – but there was no documents inside them.
Almost 100 of the folders seized at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month which were marked as secret or classified contained no documents, the FBI has revealed.
It is not know where those documents are now.
The revelation came as US Federal agents removed thousands of documents from the former president’s home — a fraction of which contained classified information, according to a detailed inventory unsealed by a federal judge Friday.
The property list revealed by US District Judge Aileen Cannon indicated that 11,179 government documents and photographs seized by federal agents on August 8 bore no classification markings at all.
And the rundown indicates that agents in the raid on Mar-a-Lago even took such innocuous belongings as the former president’s clothing, magazines he kept and newspaper clippings.
By contrast, 54 documents removed from the Florida resort were marked “SECRET,” 31 were labelled “CONFIDENTIAL” and another 18 were labelled “TOP SECRET,” according to an initial tally by The New York Post.
Secret documents missing from folders
Agents also took 48 empty folders labelled with “CLASSIFIED” banners while another 41 empty folders were labelled “Return to Staff Secretary/Military Aide.” It is not clear from the inventory list why the folders were empty.
Of the top-secret government records, seven were found in a container in Trump’s office and 11 others were found inside a Mar-a-Lago storage room.
Meanwhile, 17 secret documents were found in Mr Trump’s office and 37 inside the storage room, according to the list.
Top secret is the highest classification reserved for the country’s most closely-held secrets. Information that could fall under that classification includes nuclear codes or details provided by a sensitive human source — aka spies.
Meanwhile, the secret classification refers to information that would potentially cause “serious” damage to national security if it were made public.
While the detailed inventory doesn’t shed light on what the documents contained, it shows the extent to which the classified materials were mixed in among newspapers, magazines, clothing and other personal items.
In total, more than 1600 news articles, magazines and newspapers were found inside the storage containers and Mr Trump’s office.
In a redacted affidavit made public last week, the US Justice Department (DOJ) had revealed that 184 classified documents were mixed in with those items, which included mementos from Mr Trump’s four years in office.
Several items marked “article of clothing/gift items” were also seized, according to the list.
The unsealing of the more detailed inventory list came a day after the judge agreed to make it public during a hearing on whether to grant Mr Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the trove of documents taken by the FBI.
In addition to the inventory, a brief three-page filing by the DOJ was unsealed on Friday, US time, that updated the court about the status of its investigative team’s review of the documents seized.
The filing, dated August 30, said investigators had “completed a preliminary review of the materials seized” and segregated all the records with classification markings.
“The seized materials will continue to be used to further the government’s investigation, and the investigative team will continue to use and evaluate the seized materials as it takes further investigative steps, such as through additional witness interviews and grand jury practice,” the filing says.
The records were released as part of the Justice Department’s ongoing criminal investigation into whether Mr Trump illegally retained classified documents.
The department has alleged in previous court filings that government records were concealed and removed from Mar-a-Lago’s storage room — and that the FBI were misled about the continued presence of classified materials there in the months before the August. 8 raid.
Mr Trump – and, or, members of his team – could potentially face obstruction of justice charges for allegedly concealing the classified documents, according to experts.
Violation of Section 1519, the obstruction law referenced in the FBI’s search warrant and the heavily-redacted affidavit, can bring up to 20 years in prison.
In addition to obstruction, the FBI’s warrant was approved based on concerns there were violations of the Espionage Act and concealment of documents. Violations of the Espionage Act can result in up to 10 years in prison, while concealment of documents can bring up to three years in prison.
The DOJ hasn’t yet publicly said who they believe is guilty of possible, if any, crimes.
Legal experts have been split over whether any potential charges or conviction could up-end Mr Trump’s plans to run for president again.
Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston, has argued that Mr Trump can’t be “disqualified” because that potential block had been ruled out when the laws were examined in 2015 amid the Hillary Clinton email saga.
But Marc Elias, a lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, has previously pointed to legal language that says anyone convicted of the concealment of documents “shall forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States.”
This article appeared in the New York Post and is reproduced with permission.
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