Ex-president Donald Trump has denied reports that he had documents related to nuclear weapons at his home on Friday morning and accused the FBI of “planting information.”
This response came after a Florida judge unsealed the FBI search warrant that allowed agents to enter Mr Trump’s Palm Beach home on Monday.
According to a copy of the warrant and inventory of documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago which was obtained by The Independent, agents recovered from the ex-president a set of papers bearing markings identifying them as Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information — a level of classification above the top secret level which is often applied to intelligence sources as well as the US nuclear arsenal.
Items were removed from the property that were there in violation of the Espionage Act, which makes it a crime to remove information related to national defence “from its proper place of custody” as well as sections of US criminal law covering obstruction of justice and removing government records. Mr Trump has repeatedly suggested without basis that the FBI planted evidence during the search.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice filed a motion to unseal the warrant, with Attorney General Merrick Garland stressing that the decision was not taken lightly – and confirming that he personally authorised the decision to seek the warrant in the first place.
