Some of the evidence that federal prosecutors are reportedly set to give to former President Donald Trump’s defense team contains information about current criminal investigations that could be used to “identify” individuals in the cases.
The New York Times reported that prosecutors filed a request for a protective order on the evidence and that Trump’s lawyers did not object to it.
The filing said that some of the documents were about “ongoing investigations” and contained information that could be used to “identify uncharged individuals.”
There was no hint about what the “ongoing investigations” were related to or if the documents were among the 31 sets of national defense documents that Trump was indicted for allegedly retaining after the government repeatedly told him to return the documents.
Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, ordered on Friday that lawyers for Trump’s team needed to start the work needed to get security clearances so they could see the classified documents in the case.
CBS News investigative reporter Catherine Herridge said that some of the materials recovered by investigators were “way beyond top secret” records.
“Some of these are way beyond top secret, like, I said, Talent Keyhole, when you’re talking about Special Access Programs or SCI, sensitive compartmentalized information,” she said. “These really are the crown jewels of the U.S. intelligence community.”
The indictment stated that documents recovered from Trump by federal investigators included “classified documents he stored in his boxes,” which “included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the United States and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military, attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.”
Trump was charged with 37 criminal counts, with 31 of those being the willful retention of national defense information. Other counts include conspiracy to obstruct justice, corruptly concealing documents or records, and making false statements.
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