Trump's documents kept at Mar-a-Lago were 'among the most sensitive secrets we hold' report noted

27 August 2022

The hundreds of documents that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) retrieved from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home had been deemed classified and top secret by the U.S. government, per a new report.

According to The Washington Post, two individuals with knowledge of the FBI's search have shared details about the documents that were recovered.

The report indicated that: "Some material recovered in the search is considered extraordinarily sensitive, two people familiar with the search said, because it could reveal carefully guarded secrets about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods. One of them said the information is “among the most sensitive secrets we hold.”

Per the post, an insider also shed light on the concerns of Trump's inner circle.

In Trump’s inner circle, concern has been rising since June that the former president has created legal jeopardy for himself, according to multiple people in his orbit. “Mar-a-Lago is a big problem,” one of the people said.

The latest developments come months after the investigative inquiry began once Trump returned more than a dozen boxes of "newspaper clips, presidential briefing papers, handwritten notes and assorted mementos to the National Archives."

However, that didn't resolve the problem because the returned boxes were unlabeled and many contained documents that were not relative to the former president's time in the White House. At that point, the National Archives escalated the problem to the FBI.

By May 10, Steidel Wall, acting archivist and head of the National Archives and Records Administration, expressed interest in moving forward with the investigation and penned a letter detailing her interest.

“The question, in this case, is not a close one,” Wall wrote. “The Executive Branch here is seeking access to records belonging to, and in the custody of, the Federal Government itself, not only in order to investigate whether those records were handled in an unlawful manner but also, as the National Security Division explained, to ‘conduct an assessment of the potential damage resulting from the apparent manner in which these materials were stored and transported and take any necessary remedial steps.’ ”

As the investigation continued, more details emerged and a subpoena was issued for Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage. Those details also became a topic of discussion. “The footage showed various people entering and leaving the room, according to a person with direct knowledge of it,” the report notes, concluding, “Just under seven weeks later, the FBI moved in.”

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