Former President Donald Trump returned last January 15 boxes with documents that he took from the White House after leaving the presidency a year earlier, and that by law should have remained in the custody of the federal government.
A judicial document known this Friday provides information on what those 15 boxes contained: 14 of them had a total of 184 classified papers;
67 marked
confidential
, 92 secret, and 25
maximum level of secrecy
.
The Justice Department suspected that Trump was keeping even more
secret documents
than the ones he turned over, so it petitioned a Florida judge to allow a search of FBI agents looking for those papers.
The search was carried out at the beginning of August, and this Friday the judge allowed the publication of the request from the Department of Justice that justified it.
In that 36-page document (a large part censored, with the permission of the judge, to avoid revealing sensitive information that could endanger the
ongoing criminal investigation
), it was where, in addition to details about the August search, new information was revealed. about the documents that were seized in January.
The concern expressed by the National Archives after reviewing the documents was what partially justified the August search.
But
what then contained those secret papers?
Their contents have obviously not been revealed, but some labels on those boxes have been revealed, including HCS (the Humint Control System following), a designation for a report by a CIA or DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) agent. ) based on conversations with a source in another country, i.e. a spy.
Other labels were ORCON (Originator Control), a report that can only be disclosed by the agency that produced it;
NOFORN, which cannot be shared with foreign citizens;
FISA, relating to the Foreign Intelligence Monitoring Act;
and Yes, intelligence signals, for example, intercepted communications.
Trump's handwritten notes were also found, without specifying their content.
Pages of the affidavit that justified the Mar-a-Lago search warrant. Jon Elswick / AP
A special agent in charge of the National Archives inspector general's office sent a letter to the Justice Department on February 9 reporting what he had found in the 15 boxes he recovered in January (a year after Trump left the White House with top secret documents).
The boxes contained "newspapers, magazines, print news articles, photos, miscellaneous prints, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and presidential records, and many classified records," according to the affidavit.
On February 18, the head of the National Archives, David S. Ferriero, notified Congress in a letter that he had contacted the Department of Justice to inform them that they had found documents related to national security in the 15 boxes.
The former president responded that same day: "The National Archives
found
nothing. They were given presidential records as requested, in an ordinary and routine process to ensure the preservation of my legacy under the Presidential Records Act."
The agents alleged that none of the rooms at Mar-a-Lago were equipped to store these documents, many of which could only be stored in secure government facilities.