'Made the crime far worse': Severity of Trump's classified docs incident revealed in new book
15h
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., February 18, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
A " handful"of documents found by the FBI during their raid of President Donald Trump's Palm Beach country club were "so sensitive that even a senior Justice Department official didn’t have authorization to see them," according to an explosive new book excerpted by MSNBC.
“Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department,” written by MSNBC's senior investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig and Washington Post's Aaron Davis, details how the surprise FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in 2022 revealed a national security threat so severe that they'd have gotten "American operatives killed if the information fell into the wrong hands."
The book details how assistant Attorney General Matt Olsen was so shocked by what was found, he asked his top Justice Department expert on the mishandling of classified records, Julie Edelstein what they should do next and her answer was stunning.
"If it was anybody else, we would arrest him tomorrow,” Edelstein said. "Knowingly taking classified documents outside of a secure government facility was a crime, plain and simple," she explained.
But worse than that, the book writes, was Trump's attempts to conceal them after receiving a May subpoena to return all classified records.
Trump, "made the crime far worse, she argued." Unfortunately, according to the book, "Olsen’s team knew that with Trump, all bets were off. The Justice Department would invariably treat the former president more gingerly."
Most recently, Trump announced that he is seeking approximately $230 million in total damages from the Department of Justice (DOJ) through two administrative claims related to past federal investigations, including the search of Mar a Lago, claiming it violated his civil rights.
"But these new revelations from an unprecedented probe run counter to Trump’s insistence that he was mistreated and that he engaged in no criminal wrongdoing in withholding top-secret documents at his private social club," MSNBC explains.
Following the raid, Trump posted on Truth Social, "“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents."
According to the book, FBI’s chief spokesperson, Cathy Milhoan, was about to issue a statement of her own until she was stopped because it would look "political."
FBI assistant director Alan Kohler "was stunned. It was standard FBI procedure to publicly explain that a court had approved a search," the book says.
As they dug through the "handfuls" of documents, the FBI was stunned, according to the book, which explains that "Some of the documents were so restricted that top Justice Department security officials reacted with surprise to the code names: They had never heard of them before. Some involved special access programs that required the president or a cabinet member to grant approval to view."
Not even Olsen was authorized to look at these documents, they write.
"A handful of documents stored in boxes throughout Trump’s club were so sensitive that even he didn’t have authorization to look at them," they say.
Trump's reaction to the raid also put the FBI agents in grave danger, they write.
"The same day as the attack, the FBI agents who signed the paperwork for the Mar-a-Lago search warrant were evacuated temporarily from their homes for their own safety," the book says.
"Documents with their names had begun to circulate online. The agents’ identities had been redacted from filings on the court’s website, but a copy of the original paperwork was left at Mar-a-Lago. FBI officials surmised that Trump’s team had leaked their names, endangering the agents and their families," they write.