After more than two weeks of arm wrestling with Donald Trump, the US Department of Justice released this Friday (26) details of the search warrant of the operation that seized documents at the Republican’s home on the 8th, an unprecedented attack against a former president of the country. The disclosure complied with a court order.
The document explains the reasons why it was necessary to send the police to the republican’s house, in a gesture that intensified the tempers in the country, with the right to attacks by supporters of the republican against security agents.
According to the material released this Friday, between May 16 and 18, before the operation carried out in August, FBI agents analyzed cases delivered by the former president to the National Archives.
The package arrived at the US federal police after the agency’s insistence, a year after the Republican left the presidency. In it were found 184 documents, 64 of them marked as confidential, 92 as secret and 25 as top secret — a number of them also have notes from the former president.
According to the warrant, unauthorized access to that material could “result in harm to national security.” There were documents pointing to “clandestine human sources”, which could describe operations, techniques and procedures of intelligence agents abroad, for example.
The former president’s possession of these documents has raised concerns about the possibility of more confidential information being with him. The warrant then authorized security agents to seize “all documents and records that constitute evidence, contraband, proceeds of crime or other items illegally possessed.” Among the possible crimes for which the Republican is investigated in this case are violations of the law on espionage, obstruction of justice and destruction of official documents.
With 38 pages, the document released this Friday has a series of entire passages covered with stripes, under the justification of “protecting the security and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, as well as security agents, as well as protecting the integrity of the ongoing investigation”.
There was resistance in the Department of Justice – the body that reports to the FBI, which carried out the operation – in bringing the warrant to light, on the grounds that it could hinder ongoing investigations.
A number of news outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, also entered the dispute and filed lawsuits asking for the release of the material, on the grounds that the public interest would override other reasons for secrecy.
The Justice Department of the country has also advanced against Trump on other fronts, in addition to the search for allegedly confiscated documents. The agency has heard people close to the Republican as witnesses in an investigation into the former president’s involvement in the attack on Congress on January 6, 2021.
At the time, a mob of supporters inflated by the politician invaded the Capitol building seeking to interrupt the session to certify Joe Biden’s victory in the elections. Trump claimed — and continues to do so today — that the election had been rigged; the American justice never found any evidence that this could have happened.
