The FBI recovered 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked top secret, from Mar-a-Lago: report
- The FBI took back 11 sets of classified records from Mar-a-Lago after searching it, WSJ reported.
- Some of them were marked top secret and only meant to be stored in special government facilities, the report said.
Federal agents took 11 sets of classified documents back with them after searching former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
The Journal, which reviewed an inventory list of the items seized in the raid, said the FBI took around 20 boxes of items total, including a handwritten note; Trump's order commuting the GOP strategist Roger Stone's prison sentence; information about the "President of France"; and binders of photos.
Some of the classified records that the feds seized were marked top secret, according to The Journal, and only meant to be housed in special government facilities.
Trump put out a statement after shortly after the Journal article was published disputing its reporting.
"Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn't need to 'seize' anything," the statement said. "They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request. They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago. ALL THEY HAD TO DO WAS ASK."
The statement also recycled Trump's false claim that former President Barack Obama illegally moved classified government records from the White House to Chicago.
Friday's development comes after The Washington Post reported late Thursday that the FBI was looking specifically for classified documents that contained nuclear information while searching Trump's Florida home.
Trump released a statement Friday that notably did not deny The Post's reporting and again drew a misleading comparison between between the FBI's search for classified records at his Florida home and Obama's legal transfer of records from the White House to Chicago for his presidential library.
"President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified," Trump said in the statement. "How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!"
The flurry of Trump statements comes as the Justice Department nears a Friday afternoon deadline to let a Florida court know if Trump's lawyers will agree with or object to its Thursday motion to unseal the Mar-a-Lago search records.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department took the extraordinarily unusual step of making the request to unseal because of heightened public interest in the matter after Trump announced the raid on Monday.
This story is breaking. Check back for updates.