On Friday, a federal magistrate judge in Florida ended at least some of the speculation about the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate by Justice Department officials and F.B.I. agents. Documents unsealed by the judge showed that, during the raid earlier this week, agents had discovered and removed four sets of top-secret documents and seven other sets of classified documents from Trump’s home. One group of documents was described as “classified TS/SCI documents,” an acronym for “top secret/sensitive compartmented information”—one of the highest levels of secrecy that exists in the U.S. government.
The search warrant unsealed by the judge sought “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” in violation of three criminal statutes, including the Espionage Act, which prohibits “gathering, transmitting, or losing” information relating to the national defense, and carries a penalty of up to ten years in prison. All three of the potential offenses cited in the warrant are felony crimes. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that some of the documents pertained to nuclear weapons, an account the former President dismissed as a “hoax.” But the events of the past week raise the possibility that officials have finally found misconduct by Trump for which he can be held legally accountable.
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