A photo shared by the Department of Justice gave a glimpse into the materials the FBI seized during a raid on former President Donald Trump's Florida club and residence on August 8 — including documents clearly labeled "top secret" with color-coded cover sheets.
The photo, which was shared in a court filing on Tuesday, showed a large pile of documents strewn across the floor in an unidentified location. At least half a dozen documents include the brightly-colored cover sheets that are used by the federal government to denote what level of security clearance is needed to review the given document.
As Insider has previously reported, blue cover sheets are used to label "CONFIDENTIAL" documents, red is used to label "SECRET" documents, and orange is used to label "TOP SECRET" documents, for example.
Visible in the photo of the Mar-a-Lago materials were five documents with yellow cover sheets that were labeled "TOP SECRET/SCI." Sensitive compartmented information, or SCI, denotes a further restriction of who among the group, in this case with "top secret" clearance, can view the document. At least one document with a red-ish orange cover sheet is labeled "SECRET/SCI."
"Top secret" is the highest level of classification a document can receive, followed by "secret" and "confidential," with the added SCI label imposing further restrictions.
The cover sheets also clearly state: "All individuals handling this information are required to protect it from unauthorized disclosure in the interest of the national security of the United States. Handling, storage, reproduction and disposition of the attached document will be in accordance with applicable executive order(s) statute(s) and agency implementing regulations."
The classification cover sheets are supposed to remain affixed to the top of documents until they are declassified, downgraded, or destroyed, according to the National Archives.
It's unclear where the photo of the documents was taken, but the documents were possibly laid out on the floor by agents documenting the seized materials, as evidenced by a "2A" marker and a ruler in the forefront of the image that is commonly used in such cases to show the size of materials in the photo.
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The "2A" marker appears to correlate to the list of seized materials, which described item 2A as "Various classified/TS/SCI documents." Item two on the list was described as a "leatherbound box of documents," suggesting the documents in the photo were discovered inside this box, which was not pictured.
The Justice Department is investigating Trump's handling of government records, including those he took with him to Mar-a-Lago upon exiting the White House. Presidential records, classified or not, are public property and are managed by the National Archives when a president leaves office.
During the Mar-a-Lago raid, the FBI seized several sets of classified documents, according to court records. In the court filing on Tuesday, federal investigators said they had evidence suggesting it was "likely" efforts had been taken to obstruct the investigation and that classified records may have been "concealed and removed."
Trump has denied wrongdoing with varying explanations, including that he had declassified all the documents at Mar-a-Lago, and has said his team was cooperating with the investigation prior to the search.
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The photo from Tuesday also showed a framed copy of a Time magazine cover from 2019 that featured an illustration of Trump glancing over his shoulder from inside the Oval Office as a number of his Democratic challengers for the 2020 election peer in from the window.
