The FBI recovered a document describing a foreign government’s nuclear capabilities during its search of Mar-a-Lago, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.
The Post, citing unnamed sources, did not identify the foreign government named in the document describing the country’s military defenses.
The content of the more than 11,000 government documents and photographs FBI agents recovered from Donald Trump’s Florida estate last month has not been revealed, but previous reporting from the Post indicated classified documents about nuclear weapons were among the items federal authorities were looking for.
Some of the records seized from Donald Trump’s Florida estate are typically closely guarded, the newspaper reported, and have “a designated control officer” to monitor the documents’ location.
Among the records recovered by the FBI were documents detailing top-secret US operations that require special clearances “on a need-to-know basis”, beyond a top-secret clearance, according to the Post report. Some of the Biden administration’s most senior national security officials were not authorized to review some of the documents because they are so restricted, the Post said.
Trump is under investigation by the justice department for his unauthorized removal of highly sensitive government records from the White House and for allegedly improperly storing them at Mar-a-Lago.
The findings are the latest twist in a weeks-long saga that began when US government agents conducted an unprecedented search of the former president’s Florida home. Trump has attacked the department, including at a weekend rally where he called the FBI and DoJ “vicious monsters”. Many others, including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, have defended the investigation into his retention of government records, saying that it posed a major national security risk.
A federal judge recently granted Trump’s request for the appointment of a special master to review the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago on 8 August. The decision by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, temporarily prevented the justice department from reviewing records for its criminal inquiry until after the the special master’s review.
