WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- Highly sensitive U.S. intelligence reports on Iran and China were among the documents recovered by federal agents during their August search of former president Donald Trump’s home in Florida, the Washington Post reports.
They included secret documents that described US spying efforts against China and at least one of them described Iran’s missile program, it said, citing unidentified “people familiar with the matter,” emphasizing that the documents were considered to be “among the most sensitive” in the materials seized by the FBI.
The report then cited experts as insisting that the release of information in such documents would pose multiple risks, including the leak of spies and other intruding elements collaborating with U.S. spying efforts as well as compromising intelligence collection activities.
The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home as part of a probe into the potential mishandling of classified information, obstruction, and destruction of government records. With thousands of documents recovered, however, Trump and his supporters have rebuked ongoing investigations and suits as a political scheme to undermine his legitimacy.
Newly surfaced findings have indicated that some of the documents seized during the FBI search were so sensitive that many top officials were not aware of their contents. In fact, confidential information about Iran and China has since been regarded as among the most top secret recovered so far.
The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Trump broke the law by taking government records, including about 100 classified documents, to his Florida estate after leaving office in January 2021.
The department is also looking into whether Trump or his team obstructed justice when the FBI sent agents to search his home, and has warned that more classified documents might still be missing.
The sensitivity of the top secret documents, which could endanger U.S. intelligence liaisons, will count as an aggravating factor when prosecutors decide whether or not to file charges in relation to the case.
Trump, meanwhile, has been careful to deny any allegations, claiming in a recently televised interview that presidents have the ability to declassify information “even by thinking about it.” Lawyers who specialize in matters of national security have dismissed such remarks.
“Who could ever trust corrupt, weaponized agencies, and that includes NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), who disrespects our Constitution and Bill of Rights, to keep and safeguard any records, especially since they’ve lost millions and millions of pages of information from previous Presidents,” said the hawkish ex-president.
“Also, who knows what NARA and the FBI plant into documents, or subtract from documents — we will never know, will we?” asked Trump on his media platform, Truth Social, on Friday afternoon.
The Trump administration was widely reported to be particularly hawkish against Iran. He remains infamous for ordering the terrorist assassination of Iran’s highly revered anti-terror Gen. Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 and unilaterally withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – back in 2018 while imposing variety of brutal sanctions against the Islamic Republic.