The FBI photographed documents marked “Top Secret” on the floor of former President Trump’s office in Mar-a-Lago, Fla. The redacted image was included in a Justice Department file.
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Department of Justice
The FBI photographed documents marked “Top Secret” on the floor of former President Trump’s office in Mar-a-Lago, Fla. The redacted image was included in a Justice Department file.
Department of Justice
The photo hit Page like a microphone drop.
When the Justice Department rejected former President Donald Trump’s call for a special master in his records dispute, it included a photo of classified documents spread out on a carpeted floor at Mar-a-Lago — two months after Trump’s team certified all such documents. to give up.
The photo, which many observers called unprecedented, immediately sparked discussions about Trump’s legal troubles.
For Orin Kerr, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, the jaw-dropping photo and recording are the latest steps in an extraordinary sequence, with the US government arguing over national secrets with its former chief executive.
“That’s an unusual response, but that’s to be expected,” Kerr said. “It was filed in response to an unusual request by a judge to respond to a very unusual filing from Trump.”
The photo was staged for dramatic effect, Trump’s team says
In their response filed late Wednesday, Trump’s legal team called the Justice Department’s filing “extraordinary.”
They accuse the government of “criminalizing the possession of personal and presidential data by a former President in a secure environment.”
Trump’s team also struggled with images of the documents, with attorney Lindsey Halligan writing that the Justice Department “gratuitously included a photograph of alleged classified material taken out of a container and spread on the floor for dramatic effect.” .
As pictures go, the FBI image doesn’t look particularly well composed, with papers strewn across the carpet. But the yellow and bright red markings of these papers, their “TOP SECRET” sheets, make the randomness of the scene all the more striking: here is hard-earned information that has been shared widely by the government, lying on the floor of an office private in Florida.
“In some cases, both FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review sought additional authorization” before they could review the contents of some files, the Justice Department said.
What about those abbreviations?
The photo quickly sparked interest in the mysterious abbreviations that label America’s national secrets.
One of the most reviewed notes says that the contents of some files are marked “TOP SECRET//SCI” and restricted “UP TO HCS-P/SI/TK”. Here is a quick summary of these terms:
HCS-P – Product of the HUMINT Control System, using the acronym for human intelligence. According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence classification manual, “HCS protects the most sensitive HUMINT operations and information obtained from clandestine and/or uniquely sensitive HUMINT sources, methods, and certain related collection capabilities, technologies, and technical methods or supporting. of HUMINT.”
SCI – Sensitive shared information, a broad term for intelligence information that requires a formal system to control its distribution.
AND – Special Intelligence, or more specifically, “technical and intelligence information derived from the monitoring of foreign communications signals by recipients other than those intended” – the kind of work done by the National Security Agency, for example.
TK – Talent Keyhole, a long-held moniker referring to classified spy satellite data.
These terms are simply on the cover sheets. The internal documents themselves were redacted, along with their detailed allocation definitions.
What case is this again?
While Trump’s legal involvements are extensive, this particular case dates back to Aug. 22, when the former president asked a federal district judge in Florida to appoint a special master to review all materials taken from his home.
Trump is the plaintiff in the case; the defendant is the United States of America.
“Politics cannot be allowed to influence the administration of justice,” Trump’s team said in its initial filing, calling him the “clear favorite” in the 2024 presidential race, “should he decide to run.”
In that filing, Trump sought to block the Justice Department from reviewing the materials until a special master was appointed. He also asked the judge to compel the government to provide a “sufficiently detailed bill” of the items seized and to “immediately return anything taken that is outside the scope of the search warrant.
The judge in the case is Aileen M. Cannon, whom Trump appointed in 2020. She is herself a veteran of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in South Florida, which is now litigating the case.
“In a normal case, a judge would find the DOJ’s answer persuasive and be done with it,” Kerr said. “It’s possible that this particular judge will try to give more to Trump, but my guess is that it won’t matter much: if a special master is appointed it probably won’t make much of a difference in the case.”
