Following the release of a frank affidavit alleging that Donald Trump obstructed justice and possessed confidential White House documents, leading to a federal law enforcement raid on his Mar-a-Lago home, the former president said the search was one of ” the most egregious assault on democracy.” in US history.
“Who, by the way, goes around places, in a very bad way, whom I have never seen before!” he wrote on his Truth Social account on August 27.
In a separate post, he wrote: “PRIVACY INVASION!!!”
A sworn statement about the probable reason for the search of the former president’s property revealed that federal officials found 184 classified documents that were returned to the National Archives earlier this year when officials alerted the U.S. Department of Justice after discovering documents labeled “top secret” and classified .
Justice Department officials conducted an investigation, believing the documents could compromise “secret human sources” or overseas intelligence gathering if released to the public. The 38-page affidavit identified “probable grounds for believing that evidence of obstruction will be found” at his Florida property.
The officials also said that, without significant amendments, “affidavits could be used to identify many, if not all, of these witnesses.”
“If the identities of witnesses are revealed, they may be harmed, including retaliation, intimidation or harassment, and even threats to their physical safety,” the statement said. “As the court has already noted, “these fears are not hypothetical in the present case.”
The former president, whose baseless and ongoing narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen sparked violence at the US Capitol in an attempt to reverse the results, raged on his social media platform in the days following the raid and subsequent public scrutiny, while the US Intelligence officials and lawmakers have announced their own national security risk assessments of Trump’s handling of the documents.
Meanwhile, Trump’s website Truth Social, launched as a Twitter clone six months ago after it was banned from the platform, has a worrying future without a guaranteed source of income, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission from a company planning to take over Trump Media. & Technology group of the public.
The company warned that its business could be damaged if the former president “becomes less popular or there are further controversies that undermine his credibility.”
In a May letter from the National Archives to Trump’s lawyers, the former president was in possession of more than 700 pages of classified documents. The Justice Department has reportedly unearthed more than 300 classified documents since Trump left the White House in January.
Investigators visited Mar-a-Lago in June, and later that month the FBI interviewed employees and others.
On August 5, a federal judge approved a search warrant for the Department of Justice, which had “probable grounds for believing that additional documents containing classified [national defense informatio] or which are presidential documents that are subject to record keeping requirements currently left on the premises.”
The search was carried out on 8 August.
According to a written statement about the probable cause of the search, a “preview” of 15 crates collected earlier this year showed that 184 documents were classified, “including 67 CONFIDENTIAL, 92 SECRET, and 25 “SECRET”. like TOP SECRET.”