Watergate prosecutor says DOJ will scrutinize recovered Mar-a-Lago materials: 'I'm sure they're going to be fingerprinting every one of those documents'
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
- The intelligence community says they're assessing the security risk of documents found at Mar-a-Lago.
- Several classified documents were seized from Trump's property earlier this month.
- A former Watergate prosecutor told CNN that the DOJ will follow the damage assessment of the documents.
Former assistant special Watergate prosecutor Nick Ackerman said he thinks the Justice Department will closely monitor the damage assessment of documents obtained during the search of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.
"That's a big issue here. In fact, I think the prosecutors will be investigating some of the same things. I mean, for example, they're looking at the videos that were on the storage area," Ackerman told CNN's Jim Acosta on Saturday.
He added: "They're going to want to see who moved things in and out, when they did it in relation to requests that they made. I'm sure they're going to be fingerprinting every one of those documents to try and determine whether anybody else had access to them and who had access to them."
On Saturday, Avril Haines, the Director of National Intelligence, told lawmakers that her office would be assessing the possible national security risks of the documents obtained.
"The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search," Haines wrote in the letter to House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney and House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.
The FBI had seized 11 sets of classified documents from Trump's property, including some that were marked as "top secret" and may have concerned nuclear weapons.
On Friday, the Justice Department released a heavily redacted version of the affidavit to search the estate.
During the same interview, former White House Press Secretary told Acosta, that guests of members of Mar-a-Lago could come in with very little vetting so the security protocols where those documents were kept could pose security risks.
"It is the president's home six months out of the year, but it is also a club, a resort. And it is a resort that puts its members very first," Grisham said.
She said, there are people "in and out" of there who are not necessarily vetted.
Ackerman added the "obstruction piece" is what stood out to him in the affidavit and what's "really important" from a prosecutor's perspective.
"The concealment that's listed in that affidavit, I mean, that is what really triggered this search warrant in the first place," Ackerman said. "Because they had evidence that they were being lied to, that they were being played, and that Donald Trump and some others were basically concealing these documents."
He added, "Which leads to the big question why would they even want these documents in the first place, which of course, brings up this issue of what happened to these documents, who had access to them, and were any of our real major secrets blown because of the way this material was handled."
Contributer : Business Insider https://ift.tt/TFsBnrP
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Monday, August 29, 2022
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