FBI recovered ‘top secret’ documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home | Donald Trump News

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Federal judge makes search warrant public amid accusations by the former president that probe is politically motivated.

The FBI recovered documents that were labeled “top secret” from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, according to court papers released after a federal judge unsealed the warrant that authorised the unprecedented search this week.

A property receipt unsealed by the court on Friday shows FBI agents took 11 sets of classified records from the estate during a search on Monday. The property receipt is a document prepared by federal agents to specify what was taken during a search.

The FBI search on Trump’s residence was partly based on suspicions of violations of the US Espionage Act related to the illegal retention of sensitive defence documents, the warrant showed.

The seized records include some that were marked as classified and some top secret. The court records did not provide specific details about the documents or what information they might contain.

In a statement on Friday, Trump claimed that the documents seized by agents at his Florida club were “all declassified”, and argued that he would have turned over the documents to the Department of Justice if asked.

While incumbent presidents have the power to declassify information, that authority lapses as soon as they leave office and it was not clear if the documents in question have ever been declassified.

Trump also kept possession of the documents despite multiple requests from agencies, including the National Archives, to turn over presidential records in accordance with federal law.

US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, the same judge who signed off on the search warrant that sparked Monday’s FBI search, unsealed the warrant and property receipt on Friday at the request of the Department of Justice after Attorney General Merrick Garland declared there was “substantial public interest in this matter”, and Trump backed the warrant’s “immediate” release.

Trump’s lawyers had been given copies of the warrant and the property receipts on Monday and could have made them public at any time.

The Department of Justice told the judge on Friday afternoon that Trump’s lawyers did not object to the proposal to make it public.

In messages posted on his Truth Social platform, Trump wrote, “Not only will I not oppose the release of documents … I am going a step further by ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents.”

The Department of Justice’s request is striking because such documents traditionally remain sealed during a pending investigation. But the department appeared to recognise that its silence since the search had created a vacuum for bitter verbal attacks by Trump and his allies, and that the public was entitled to the FBI’s side about what prompted Monday’s action at the former president’s home.

“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” said a motion filed in federal court in Florida on Thursday.

The search at Trump’s home sparked fury among his supporters, with some Republican legislators promising to investigate the Department of Justice, including Garland, if they win power in the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump has portrayed the search as a Democratic-led political attack to prevent him from running for president in 2024. The White House of President Joe Biden has repeatedly said it did not have prior knowledge of the search and it does not interfere in Department of Justice investigations.

To obtain a search warrant, federal authorities must prove to a judge that probable cause exists to believe that a crime was committed. Garland said he personally approved the warrant, a decision he said the department did not take lightly given that standard practice where possible is to select less intrusive tactics than a search of one’s home.