In a court filing Tuesday, the Department of Justice pushed back against former President Donald Trump’s request to have a special master appointed to review the files seized from Mar-a-Lago.
The filing alleges the former president repeatedly refused to turn over highly classified documents — even after he was subpoenaed in June to do so — and obstructed the investigation into his handling of documents.
The DOJ also released a photo showing highly classified documents scattered on the floor next to a framed copy of Time magazine with Trump on the cover, from March 4, 2019.
Most of the documents in the photo appear to be marked with some of the highest-level classifications. Here’s why some former intelligence officials are worried by what they see in the photo.
What the classification markings mean
The DOJ’s latest court filing doesn’t specify what is in the documents, but based on the classification, information experts have been able to piece some things together.
According to Scott Stedman, an investigative journalist, all of the secret documents in the FBI photo are classified as “HCS-P/SI/TK.” The HCS-P stands for “intelligence product derived from sensitive human sources,” which means American operatives could be in danger if the information got out.
SI stands for special intelligence or signals intelligence, which includes sensitive communications. Finally, TK stands for talent keyhole, which applies to secret spy intelligence gathered from satellites and planes.
Together, the headers suggest the top secret documents could implicate American lives and also reveal critical information about how the U.S. gathers intelligence.
‘Makes my stomach turn’
Each of the documents were also marked with “Secret/SCI,” which stands for secret compartmented information — a classification level above top secret for which individuals must be granted additional clearance to view. Some documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago were so sensitive that the agents who reviewed them needed additional clearance to do so, according to the DOJ’s filing.
Ken Harbaugh, a former Navy pilot who previously ran as a Democrat for Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, recalled the reverence top secret documents are usually treated with.
“The first few times, I was nervous,” he said in a tweet. “If I (expletive) up, even accidentally, I would go to jail. … Every time we used one of these documents in a briefing or planning session, the room got quiet. There was a palpable seriousness in the air, bordering on solemnity.”
“To see them treated like this makes my stomach turn,” Harbaugh continued, referring to the photo of the documents from Mar-a-Lago. “It is an affront to every American in uniform, every covert operative, every member of the State Department. And it should be an affront to every American who cares about our national security, and the men and women who put their lives at risk to defend it. But this isn’t just an affront. ... It’s a crime.”
What’s next?
The DOJ’s filing didn’t say whether it plans to pursue criminal charges against Trump, but it does lay out the case that Trump’s team misled investigators when they claimed all classified materials had been returned and then obstructed an ongoing investigation.
Trump claims that he had a standing executive order to automatically declassify any documents he took to the White House residence but has not provided any documentation of such an order. Even if he did, it may not help him avoid further legal trouble, because the three statutes cited in the FBI’s search warrant still apply even if the information was declassified. It also is unclear why the documents were at Mar-a-Lago in the first place.
In a statement on his Truth Social platform on Wednesday, Trump reiterated his declassification explanation, and blamed the FBI for scattering the documents on the floor.
“Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see,” he said. “Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!”
A judge is expected to make a decision whether to appoint a special master, as Trump requested. Judge Aileen Cannon has signaled she intends to appoint someone to review the documents. The next hearing is scheduled for Thursday.