Seized Trump documents showed foreign nation’s nuclear capability

A document describing a foreign government’s military defences, including its nuclear capabilities, was found in the FBI’s search last month of former US President Donald Trump’s Florida home, according to a report in the Washington Post.

The US newspaper, which cited people familiar with the matter, did not identify the foreign government discussed in the document, nor did it indicate whether the foreign government was friendly or hostile to the United States.

Trump representatives and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from the Reuters news agency.

The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its August 8 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records.

According to the Post report, some of the seized documents detailed top secret US operations that required special clearances beyond top secret clearance.

Some of the documents are so restricted that even some of the Biden administration’s most senior national security officials were not authorised to review them, the Post said.

National Intelligence Director Avril Haines said late last month she would conduct a “classification review” of the documents seized by investigators during the search of Mar-a-Lago, as well as “an Intelligence Community (IC) assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents”.

The US Justice Department is investigating Trump for removing government records from the White House after he left office in January 2021 and keeping them at his Florida estate.

Trump and his allies have denied any wrongdoing, saying at various times that some documents may have been inadvertently removed from the White House, or claiming that Trump had already declassified the documents.

On Monday, a federal judge agreed to Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review records seized in the FBI search, a move that is likely to delay the Justice Department’s criminal investigation.