US intelligence to probe security risks of Trump documents

Classified records kept at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate could include information on US intelligence gathering and spying. The head of the US intelligence community says she will launch a review of possible national security risks posed by a trove of records that had been removed from the White House and kept at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate The announcement of the review, which was revealed in a letter sent to top US legislators on Friday and obtained by US media, is the latest escalation in an ongoing saga surrounding Trump’s handling of sensitive documents after leaving the White House. In the letter to House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff and Oversight Committee chair Carolyn Maloney, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines said she would conduct a “classification review” of the documents seized by investigators during an August 8 search of Trump’s Florida estate, as well as “an Intelligence Community assessment of the potential risk to national security that would result from the disclosure of the relevant documents”. In its justification for raiding Trump’s estate, investigators pointed to a previous review of 15 boxes of government records Trump had returned to the US National Archives in January, which included highly-sensitive documents related to “national defence” and “clandestine human sources” – a term referring to the individuals that make up Washington’s vast intelligence and espionage apparatus. A previously released FBI search warrant said Trump was being investigated for possibly violating three laws: one that bans the unauthorised removal or destruction of records from a federal office; one that prohibits the falsification or destruction of records in a federal investigation; as well as the so-called Espionage Act, which bans “gathering, transmitting or losing” information related to defence with the intent that the information could be used to harm US national security or interests.