(Presidentialwire.com)- The FBI raided the Mar-a-Lago estate of former President Donald Trump in early August, and in the more than two months since that happened, they have been going through the treasure trove of documents to see what he took with him away from the White House.
Recently, two sources at the FBI who are familiar with the search have said that the FBI discovered that Trump had documents that included classified intelligence about both China and Iran. Those documents, the sources said, were found in the home of Trump at Mar-a-Lago. The FBI also raided his office at the resort.
According to The Washington Post, which was the first media outlet to report this news, said “at least one of the documents seized by the FBI describes Iran’s missile program.” Others, according to The Post report, “described highly sensitive intelligence work aimed at China.”
The sources who spoke with The Post went even further in their comments. They said that if Trump had been found to share this information with anyone else, it could potentially “expose intelligence-gathering methods that the United States wants to keep hidden from the world.”
It’s also possible, as Vanity Fair reporter Bess Levin wrote, that:
“If these documents fell into the hands of the wrong people, it could endanger the human sources aiding U.S. intelligence efforts, compromise collection methods, and lead to adversaries retaliating against the U.S.”
The Post quoted one former official at the Department of Justice, David Laufman, who said:
“The exceptional sensitivity of these documents, and the reckless exposure of invaluable sources and methods of U.S. intelligence capabilities concerning these foreign adversaries, will certainly influence the Justice Department’s determination of whether to charge Mr. Trump or others with willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act.”
There is nothing that says Trump shared these documents with anyone else, or that these documents actually exist. For now, it’s all just rumors purported by two unnamed sources The Washington Post cited in a recent story.
For his part, Trump has completely denied any wrongdoing in the case at all. He has said that he declassified the documents himself, which gave him the right to have possession of them at Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
On his own social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote:
“The FBI and the Department of ‘Justice’ … are now leaking nonstop on the Document Hoax to the Fake News.”
He’s gone as far as saying that it’s possible that FBI agents could have removed some documents that weren’t relevant to their investigation or planted other documents.
In all, the FBI took roughly 13,000 documents away from Mar-a-Lago when they initiated the raid in early August. They have said so far that they have found more than 100 documents that were considered classified.
Trump is currently engaged in legal fighting with the DOJ over this investigation, fighting for his right to have a special master review all the documents taken from his home to see if any are subject to executive or attorney-client privilege.
