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A heavily redacted copy of the FBI affidavit that explains the justification for the agency’s search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate shows that boxes retrieved from the home contained classified information — including documents marked “top secret.”
Released Friday, the affidavit does not provide new details about the 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago. It instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration had retrieved from the home in January.
In a review of those 15 boxes conducted in mid-May, FBI agents found:
• 184 documents with classification markings.
• 25 documents marked “top secret.”
• 67 documents marked “confidential.”
• 92 documents marked “secret.”
The Justice Department is investigating Trump’s handling of classified material and presidential records.
On Monday, Trump’s lawyers asked a federal judge to halt the FBI’s review of documents recovered earlier this month from Mar-a-Lago, until a neutral special master can be appointed to inspect the records.
Trump said in a statement that “ALL documents have been previously declassified” — though he has not produced evidence to support that claim — and described the records as having been “illegally seized from my home.”
The Biden White House has said it was not given prior notice of the August raid on Mar-a-Lago. On Friday, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the affidavit but declined to comment.
“We understand the interest in this. We are not going to comment on any underlying materials, any content that is related to an ongoing investigation,” she told reporters.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
