Biden administration officials raise concern about documents Trump took to Mar-a-Lago: Report

Officials in the US President Joe Biden administration have expressed “deep concern” about the documents that former President Donald Trump had taken with himself to his private residence in Florida after leaving office, a report says.

CNN on Friday cited unnamed Biden administration officials and other sources as saying that the trove of documents that the former president had taken to his Mar-a-Lago estate and that were recently retrieved in an FBI search might have disclosed sensitive information about US intelligence gathering methods or harmed relations with US allies.

CNN said some of those documents, which had been partly kept in “a basement-level storage facility” at Mar-a-Lago, “are only meant to be viewed only in secure government facilities.”

“There is a deep concern,” one senior administration official told CNN.

In historically unprecedented action, FBI raided and searched Trump’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago estate on August 8 on a warrant sought by the Department of Justice in an investigation into the former president’s handling of sensitive material after leaving office in January 2021. During the raid, FBI agents recovered 11 sets of classified files, including four that were marked “top secret/SCI,” one of the highest US government classification levels.

The Democrats’ dare

By subjecting Donald Trump to an extraordinary investigation, Democrats are apparently looking to incriminate the one-time president and avert a possible second Trump presidency. But in so doing, they also risk riling up Mr. Trump’s supporters and the broader Republican base and deepening societal fissures in America.

That investigation, extraordinary as it is, has stirred a debate about whether the Biden administration is harboring political motives about Trump, who is accused of having attempted to overturn his election loss in 2020 and who is the subject of a separate probe into that matter.

The CNN report said administration officials had “steadfastly maintained near-silence” on the Department of Justice investigation of the unorthodox taking of the documents but were becoming “increasingly concerned.”

Soon after he took office, Biden cut off Trump’s access to intelligence briefings, even though all former presidents had until then been given the privilege, in an early sign of how he was concerned about Trump’s mishandling of classified data.

Trump calls for return of privileged documents seized by FBI from his home

Former US President Trump has called on FBI to return documents reportedly seized from his Florida home that are protected by attorney-client and executive privileges.

After the FBI raid, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said he had personally approved the decision to seek the Mar-a-Lago search warrant.

The affidavit in that investigation, the basic document wherein prosecutors have likely stated the reasons for the search, is now the subject of court proceedings to decide whether it can be made public. A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Biden administration to propose redactions to the document, a sign that he may later rule that it be released.

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