a newly unsealed document shows the agency is looking into several crimes which include the, quote, willful retention of national defense information. that revelation does a couple of things, one, it intensifies the focus on former president trump as the possible or a possible subject of the investigation. trump has claimed a standing order to declassify documents he took from the white house, but in a cnn exclusive, 18 former top trump administration officials tell us they never heard of any such order issued while trump was in office. it also may be key that that law, willful retention of national defense information, it may not matter if the information was classified. we will dig into that more deeply. as the spotlight brightens on trump the doj continues its fight for some secrecy. the department expressed serious concerns that releasing the affidavit behind the search warrant could impede its investigation, also might endanger witnesses. still the judge appears to be
it is heavily redacted to protect sources, potential witnesses, as well as the ongoing investigation of not just the president but also, quoting the document now, all potential criminal confederates. that said, there is much it does reveal, starting with what investigators believe they would find beyond the 15 boxes that were returned to the government in january. quoting again, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents that contain classified ndi or that are presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the premises. we should note ndi stands for national defense information. the affidavit goes on to provide a preliminary assessment of what was in the january material. quoting again, 184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 documents marked as secret, 25 documents marked as top secret. 25 top secret documents. just to put that in perspective, i want to read y
good friday evening to you. jim sciutto here sitting in for anderson. tonight making sense of the unprecedented look we ve just gotten into what until now was almost unimaginable, the criminal investigation of a former president. it follows the equally unprecedented court-approved search of a former president s home. today under orders from the same federal judge who approved that search warrant, the justice department released the affidavit backing the warrant. the document laying out the government s case that a search could yield evidence of a crime or even multiple crimes. it is heavily redacted to protect sources, potential witnesses, as well as the ongoing investigation of not just the president but also, quoting the document now, all potential criminal confederates. that said, there is much it does reveal, starting with what investigators believe they would find beyond the 15 boxes that were returned to the government in january. quoting again, there is probable cause
outfront, obstruction. the affidavit the justice department used to obtain a search warrant for mar-a-lago. the affidavit, about 38 pages long. about half of it is redacted. blacked out. it is still shedding light on the criminal investigation including the probable cause that warranted the search. according to the doj, of the 15 boxes that trump handed over in january, 14 contained documents with classification markings. that included 67 which were marked confidential noorks marked secret, and 25 marked top secret. according to the fbi, of most significant concern was that highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records and otherwise improperly identified. tell affidavit said the fbi believes trump s storage room residential suite, the 45 office, and other locations potentially held more national defense information. that s concerning because we ll show you where some of those rooms are in mar-a-lago. you can see in red is trump s suite. and you ca
midterms. punching ballots yesterday giving insight how voters are feeling ahead of november. pat ryan projected to win the state s 19th district special election. his campaign pushed hard on the issue of abortion offering insight into the potential impact of overturning roe versus wade heading into the midterms. in florida ron desantis will face-off against a former member of his party, charlie crist as they look to slow desantis ahead of 2024. i ll going to beat this guy and as long as we do what is right, tell the truth, get help from friends across the country because if you want to help joe biden get a second term, we need to shut ron desantis down in florida now. you come help me now and you don t have to worry about him in 24 because this show will be over on november 8th. we ll have more on that race and others in a moment but we re also following this. cnn learned more than 100 classified documents comprising some 700 pages were found at trump s ma r-a-lago home