FBI agents found a highly classified document detailing a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities when they searched former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, last month, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The newspaper, citing people familiar with the search, said the FBI found documents about top-secret U.S. operations that are so classified only the president and some members of the Cabinet or high-ranking officials could know about them. Such secrets are often contained to a small group of just a few dozen people and are shared only on a need-to-know basis and are kept in a secure facility under extreme security measures.
But the FBI found such documents when it searched the Florida club that includes Trump’s residence on Aug. 8. They were among more than 100 classified files kept at the estate even after Trump’s aides said they had turned over all of the White House records they had taken there.
The Post’s report reflects the serious concerns government officials had about the material stashed at Mar-a-Lago for 18 months, since Trump left office, and adds context to the extraordinary decision to search the former president’s compound in early August.
The government had tried for months to recover the missing material. A total of 184 classified records were turned over to the National Archives in January and then 38 more in June after federal investigators visited Mar-a-Lago with a subpoena. But agents reviewed security footage and interviewed Trump’s aides, which led them to believe even more documents remained at the sprawling private club.
The details about a foreign government’s nuclear defenses were found in the last batch of classified information seized last month, although it’s unclear which country they refer to.
The Post added that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is conducting a risk assessment to see what harm was caused by the lax storage at the Florida estate. The FBI has reportedly been homing in on whether Trump or his team obstructed the government’s attempt to retrieve the material, although it’s unclear if anyone will face charges.
Trump won a court victory related to the documents this week when a judge granted his request to appoint a special master to review all of the documents that were seized. The decision, which also halts the Justice Department’s use of them for its investigation, will likely slow any inquiry but not affect its outcome.
The former president has lambasted the search as a political attack, with his legal team claiming he had broad authority to declassify the documents even though the Presidential Records Act mandates they be returned to the government at the end of a president’s term.
William Barr, a U.S. attorney general in the Trump administration, threw cold water on such claims Friday.
“People say this was unprecedented,” he told Fox News. “But it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, OK?”