By Steve Neavling
Among the documents seized by the FBI from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home was a document detailing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, The Washington Post reports.
The document, which was found during an FBI search of Trump’s house on Aug. 8, was “so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them,” according to The Washington Post.
The only officials with authority to know the details of the special-access programs were the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet-level official, unnamed officials said.
The newspaper didn’t identify the foreign government.
Trump’s lawyer Christopher Kise criticized the leaks, saying they “continue with no respect for the process nor any regard for the real truth.”
But Kise didn’t deny the report.
“Moreover, the damage to public confidence in the integrity of the system simply cannot be underestimated,” Kise said. “The responsible course of action here would be for someone — anyone — in the Government to exercise leadership and control. The Court has provided a sensible path forward which does not include the selective leak of unverifiable and misleading information. There is no reason to deviate from that path if the goal is, as it should be, to find a rational solution to document storage issues which have needlessly spiraled out of control.”
In a 54-page court filing last week, federal prosecutors said the raid on Trump’s house in Florida came after he and his advisers refused to turn over highly classified documents.
Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted Trump’s request for a special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago, a decision that will temporarily prevent federal prosecutors from using the documents in their investigation.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, former Attorney General William Barr slammed the judge’s decision to appoint a special master.
“The opinion, I think, was wrong, and I think the government should appeal it. It’s deeply flawed in a number of ways,” Barr said.
“I don’t think the appointment of a special master is going to hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory. In other words, I don’t think it changes the ball game so much as maybe we’ll have a rain delay for a couple of innings.”
