Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department on Monday said it opposes unsealing the affidavit that prosecutors used to obtain a federal judge’s approval to search former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, where they seized classified documents.

“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” prosecutors wrote in their filing.

Trump’s Republican allies in recent days have ramped up their calls for Attorney General Merrick Garland to unseal the document, which would reveal the evidence that prosecutors showed to demonstrate they had probable cause to believe crimes were committed at Trump’s home — the standard they had to meet to secure the search warrant.

On Friday, at the Justice Department’s request, a federal court in south Florida unsealed the search warrant and several accompanying legal documents that showed that FBI agents carted away 11 sets of classified records from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Some of the records seized were labeled as “top secret” – the highest level of classification reserved for the most closely held U.S. national security information.

Such documents usually are typically kept in special government facilities because disclosure could damage national security

The Justice Department on Monday cited this as another reason to keep the affidavit sealed, saying the probe involves “highly classified materials.”

The agency said it would not oppose the release of other sealed documents tied to the raid, such as cover sheets and the government’s motion to seal.

The warrant released on Friday showed that the Justice Department is investigating violations of three laws, including a provision in the Espionage Act that prohibits the possession of national defense information and another statute that makes it a crime to knowingly destroy, conceal or falsify records with the intent to obstruct an investigation.

Trump has since claimed, without evidence, that he had a standing order to declassify all of the materials recovered at his home.

The decision by Garland to unseal the warrant was highly unusual, given the Justice Department’s policy not to comment on pending investigations.

On the same day Garland announced his decision to seek to unseal the warrant, an armed man with right-wing views tried to breach an FBI office in Cincinnati, Ohio. He was later shot dead by police following a car chase.

Prosecutors on Monday cited the recent violence and increasing threats against the FBI as another reason not to release the affidavit.

“Information about witnesses is particularly sensitive given the high-profile nature of this matter and the risk that the revelation of witness identities would impact their willingness to cooperate with the investigation,” they wrote.

Also on Monday the Justice Department said a Pennsylvania man was arrested on charges of making threats on the social media service Gab against FBI agents. Adam Bies, 46, was taken into custody on Friday in connection with the social media posts, the DOJ said.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Stephen Coates)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Attorneys for Rudy Giuliani, a former lawyer to Donald Trump, have been told he is a target of a criminal investigation in Georgia into election interference, the New York Times reported on Monday, citing one of Giuliani’s lawyers.

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Tim Ahmann)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Elections in Wyoming and Alaska on Tuesday could relaunch the political career of a former Republican star and effectively end the career of another — at least for now.

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney is the vice chair of a U.S. House committee seeking to expose the truth behind former President Donald Trump’s relentless efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election, and his role in fomenting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Cheney’s determination to prevent Trump from ever again serving in the White House has left her fighting to hold on to the House seat she has held for three terms. Trump has made Cheney’s ouster a top priority, endorsing a challenger and traveling to Wyoming to try to seal the deal.

In Alaska, Sarah Palin jumped on a vacancy in the state’s congressional delegation as a potential springboard back into elected office. A victory in Tuesday’s special election to fill the remaining months of the late U.S. Rep. Don Young’s term could send her to Washington as soon as next month.

Palin, a former Alaska governor and the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has been out of elected office for more than a decade but is betting her insurgent brand of conservativism can make her a hit again in the age of Trumpism.

What to watch:

WYOMING

Cheney’s work as vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee has won her bipartisan praise from those who see Trump as a threat to American democracy. But it has severely threatened her chances of prevailing in the Republican primary in deeply red Wyoming, where Trump notched one of his most lopsided 2020 victories, capturing 70% of the vote compared to Joe Biden’s 27%.

Set to deny Cheney a fourth term as Wyoming’s lone member of the House is Harriet Hageman, a Cheyenne ranching industry attorney who was little known outside the state before winning Trump’s endorsement last year.

Hageman finished in the middle of a five-way, 2018 Republican gubernatorial primary. She’s campaigned aggressively for Cheney’s House seat, appearing at county fairs, parades and rodeos. Making his first public political appearance in Wyoming, Trump drew a crowd of at least 10,000 to a Casper rally supporting Hageman in May.

A defeat for Cheney would cap a swift, once unthinkable political collapse in a state where her name recognition is nearly universal and her family’s political roots run deep. Her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, held the state’s House seat for 10 years until 1989.

Still, the primary comes after Republicans booted Cheney as the party’s No. 3 House leader and the Wyoming GOP censured her. Security threats have mostly prevented the congresswoman from attending public events and rallies as she campaigns.

Cheney has instead opted for private gatherings and endorsements from well-known, traditional Republicans like Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson. She also released an ad in which her father declares: “In our nation’s 246-year history, there has never been an individual who was a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump.”

Cheney’s best hope is that enough Wyoming Democrats will switch parties to vote for her instead of their own party’s three candidates — none of whom stands a chance in November’s general election. Even Cheney’s close allies say she might be putting principle above success in this race.

That has fueled speculation that Cheney is hoping for something bigger, and she’s refused to rule out a 2024 presidential run.

ALASKA

Palin is on the ballot twice in Alaska: once in a special election to complete Young’s term and another full a full two-year House term starting in January.

Voters approved an elections overhaul in 2020 ending party primaries and instituting ranked voting in general elections. Endorsed by Trump, Palin finished first among 48 candidates to qualify for a special election. They were seeking to replace Young, who died in March at age 88, after 49 years as Alaska’s lone House member.

Palin is now trying to secure the win against the No. 2 and 4 finishers, Republican Nick Begich and Democrat Mary Peltola. The third-place vote-getter pulled out of the race after the special primary.

In a recent address to the Conservative Political Action Conference, Palin decried the new voting system, saying, “It is bizarre, it’s convoluted, it’s complicated. And it results in voter suppression.”

Tuesday’s ballot also features a House primary race and one for the U.S. Senate in which Trump’s influence may not prove decisive. Alaskans pick one candidate in each race, with the top four vote-getters advancing to the general election, regardless of party affiliation.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski is seeking reelection to a seat she has held for nearly 20 years. She faces 18 opponents — the most prominent of which is Republican Kelly Tshibaka, who has been endorsed by Trump.

Murkowski, the state’s senior senator, is a Trump critic who voted to convict him at his impeachment trial following the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. The former president has railed against Murkowski, including at a rally with Tshibaka and Palin last month in Anchorage.

The House primary, meanwhile, has 22 candidates, including Palin, Begich and Peltola.

Begich has tried to cast Palin as a quitter because she resigned as governor partway through her term in 2009. Palin has referred to Begich, nephew of former Democratic Alaska Sen. Mark Begich and grandson of former Democratic Rep. Nick Begich, as her “fellow ‘Republican’” in the race. Begich counters that he’s always been a Republican, despite coming from a family of prominent Democrats.

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Associated Press writers Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyo., and Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ap_politics.

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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — They hail from their states’ most prominent Republican families. They have been among the GOP’s sharpest critics of former President Donald Trump. And after the Jan. 6 insurrection, they supported his impeachment.

But for all their similarities, the political fortunes of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming are poised to diverge on Tuesday when they’re each on the ballot in closely watched primary elections.

Cheney faces daunting prospects in her effort to fend off the Trump-backed Harriet Hageman, increasingly looking at a life beyond Capitol Hill that could include a possible presidential campaign. Murkowski, however, is expected to advance from her primary and is already planning to compete in the November general election.

The anticipated outcomes at least partially stem from the nuanced politics of each state. Wyoming is a Republican stronghold, delivering Trump his strongest victory of any state in the 2020 campaign. Alaska, meanwhile, has a history of rewarding candidates with an independent streak.

But Murkowski enjoys an additional advantage in the way elections are being conducted in Alaska this year. Winner-take-all party primaries, like the one Cheney is facing, have been replaced by a voter-approved process in which all candidates are listed together. The four who get the most votes, regardless of party affiliation, advance to the general election in which ranked voting will be used.

Murkowski benefits from avoiding a Republican primary, “which she would have had a zero percent — I mean zero percent — chance of winning,” said Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.

Murkowski has 18 challengers in her primary, the most prominent being Republican Kelly Tshibaka, whom Trump has endorsed. The Alaska Democratic Party, meanwhile, has endorsed Pat Chesbro, a retired educator.

In an interview, Murkowski insisted she would be among the candidates advancing from the primary and said her success requires, in part, coalition building.

“That’s kind of my strong suit, that’s what I do,” she said.

For his part, Trump has been harsh in his assessment of Murkowski. At a rally in Anchorage last month with Tshibaka and Sarah Palin, whom he’s endorsed for Alaska’s only House seat, he called Murkowski “the worst. I rate her No. 1 bad.”

Trump participated in a telerally for Tshibaka on Thursday while Murkowski mingled with supporters at a campaign office opening in Juneau, which boasted a spread that included moose chili and smoked salmon dip. Murkowski said Trump isn’t a factor in the campaign she’s running.

“He is going to do what he’s going to do,” she said. But she told supporters the campaign will be challenging.

Murkowski was censured by Alaska Republican Party leaders last year over numerous grievances, including the impeachment vote and speaking critically of Trump and her support of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s nomination.

Tuckerman Babcock, a former state Republican Party chair who is running for state Senate, said Murkowski has lost the support of many Alaska Republicans, which he called a “political reality over a record of many years.”

Republicans in Alaska are “almost unanimous in their opposition to Lisa Murkowski,” he said. “Are they divided on other issues? Of course.”

Babcock said the new elections system lets candidates “self-identify” with a party and is not an improvement over the old party primary process.

Chuck Kopp, a Republican former state legislator, is hopeful about the new system. Kopp lost his 2020 Republican primary after being part of a bipartisan state House majority composed largely of Democrats.

“It’s only the fringe that is clinging like a death grip on a failed paradigm, and that paradigm is extreme partisanship at all costs,” he said. “I think Alaska is going to take a leadership role in moving away from that. That’s what I’m hoping for.”

Kopp said that while he has not always supported Murkowski, she has been “fearless when it counts for this country.”

“I think she has shown that personality cults aren’t conservative, conspiracy theories aren’t conservative and treating politics like a religion is not conservative,” Kopp said. He said he thinks Murkowski has more support throughout Alaska than party activists give her credit for.

The Senate seat has been held by a Murkowski since 1981; before Lisa Murkowski, it was her father, Republican Frank Murkowski. He appointed his daughter to succeed him in 2002 after he became governor. Murkowski won the seat in her own right in 2004.

Murkowski has not cracked 50% of the vote in a Senate general election, and needing to build a coalition of support is nothing new to her. She won a write-in campaign in 2010 after losing that year’s Republican primary to tea party favorite Joe Miller.

Murkowski overwhelmingly won her Republican primary against little-known opponents in 2016, the year Trump was elected.

Rosita Worl, an Alaska Native leader, referred to the 2010 primary as “the debacle” and said Alaska Natives rallied around Murkowski and her write-in bid. Worl, who attended Murkowski’s Juneau campaign event, said she is not a Republican herself but sees Murkowski as an Alaskan and said the senator has “always supported our issues.”

State Rep. Zack Fields, a Democrat seeking reelection to an Anchorage legislative seat, said there are yards in his district with signs for him and Murkowski. He said he doesn’t agree with Murkowski on the “majority of votes that she’s cast over her career.”

“But she has shown that she believes in democracy and will work with people to accomplish things that are the right thing for citizens. That actually is at risk right now,” he said.

Fields called the insurrection “horrifying.”

“But what was even frankly more terrifying than that is that so many elected officials and high-ranking so-called leaders would excuse it, justify it and otherwise embolden those who threaten democracy,” he said.

Cheney is the vice chair of the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. The insurrection was a big issue during a June debate between Cheney and Republican challengers, including Hageman. Hageman said the committee was “not focused on things that are important to the people of Wyoming.”

Entering the final stretch of her primary campaign, Cheney hasn’t backed down. She released a video on Thursday with a closing message reinforcing her criticism of Trump.

“The lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen is insidious,” Cheney said. “It preys on those who love their country. It is a door Donald Trump opened to manipulate Americans to abandon their principles, to sacrifice their freedom, to justify violence, to ignore the rulings of our courts and the rule of law.”

She added, “This is Donald Trump’s legacy, but it cannot be the future of our nation.”

In the interview, Murkowski said Cheney has shown courage.

“I think she has looked at this and said, this is not about Liz Cheney,” Murkowski said. “This is about … the difference between right and wrong. And she is doing her job under very challenging circumstances. But I think she’s doing it because she believes she has to.”

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By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans stepped up calls on Sunday for the release of an FBI affidavit showing the justification for its seizure of documents at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home amid reports of heightened threats against federal law enforcement personnel.

A search warrant released last week after the unprecedented search showed that Trump had 11 sets of classified documents at his home, and that the Justice Department had probable cause to conduct the search based on possible Espionage Act violations.

Republicans are calling for the disclosure of more detailed information that persuaded a federal judge to issue the search warrant, which may show sources of information and details about the nature of the documents and other classified information. The unsealing of such affidavits is highly unusual and would require approval from a federal judge.

“I think a releasing the affidavit would help, at least that would confirm that there was justification for this raid,” Republican Senator Mike Rounds told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

“The Justice Department should “show that this was not just a fishing expedition, that they had due cause to go in and to do this, that they did exhaust all other means,” Rounds said. “And if they can’t do that, then we’ve got a serious problem on our hands.”

Separately on Sunday, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Democrat Mark Warner and Republican Marco Rubio, asked the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to provide the seized documents on a classified basis.

A spokesperson for the committee, charged with oversight of the handling of classified information, said the two senators had also requested “an assessment of potential risks to national security” as a result of possible mishandling of the files.

Representative Mike Turner, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN on Sunday that the Biden administration should provide more details on what led to the search.

“Congress is saying, ‘Show us. We want to know what did the FBI tell them? What did they find?’” Turner said.

The Department of Justice did respond to a request for comment on the FBI affidavit.

HEIGHTENED THREATS

The calls from Republicans came amid reports https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mar-a-lago-search-fbi-threat-law-enforcement that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security warned of increased threats to law enforcement emanating from social media platforms in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago search.

The FBI said in a statement that it is always concerned about threats to law enforcement and was working with other agencies to assess and respond to such threats, “which are reprehensible and dangerous.”

Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a former FBI agent and prosecutor from Pennsylvania, said he was concerned about the safety of federal law enforcement officers amid such threats, adding “everybody needs to be calling for calm.”

He told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the search of Trump’s home “was an unprecedented action that needs to be supported by unprecedented justification” and the probable-cause affidavit would show whether that standard was reached — even if it was only shown to lawmakers in a classified briefing.

“I’ve encouraged all my colleagues on the left and the right to reserve judgment and not get ahead of yourself because we don’t know what that document contains. It’s going answer a lot of questions.”

DAMAGE ASSESSMENT

Democrats on Sunday did not echo calls for the affidavit’s release.

Instead, Representative Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said he was asking for an assessment of potential damage done to U.S. national security from Trump’s possession of the classified documents, along with an intelligence briefing.

The “Top Secret” and “Sensitive Compartmented Information” documents could cause “extremely grave damage to national security” if disclosed, Schiff told CBS.

“So the fact that they were in an unsecured place that is guarded with nothing more than a padlock, or whatever security they had at a hotel, is deeply alarming,” Schiff said.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NBC that she could not make a judgment as to whether the Justice Department should indict Trump on criminal charges.

“This is going to be up to the Justice Department to make a decision about what happened here, why it happened, and if it rises to the level of a crime,” Klobuchar said.

(The story corrects 10th paragraph to read “did not respond”, adding word “not”.)

(Reporting by David Lawder; Additional reporting by David Shepardson and Michael Martina; Editing by Heather Timmons and Lisa Shumaker)

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Facebook failed to detect blatant election-related misinformation in ads ahead of Brazil’s 2022 election, a new report from Global Witness has found, continuing a pattern of not catching material that violates its policies the group describes as “alarming.”

The advertisements contained false information about the country’s upcoming election, such as promoting the wrong election date, incorrect voting methods and questioning the integrity of the election.

This is the fourth time that the London-based nonprofit has tested Meta’s ability to catch blatant violations of the rules of its most popular social media platform— and the fourth such test Facebook has flubbed. In the three prior instances, Global Witness submitted advertisements containing violent hate speech to see if Facebook’s controls — either human reviewers or artificial intelligence — would catch it. They did not.

“Facebook has identified Brazil as one of its priority countries where it’s investing special resources specifically to tackle election related disinformation,” said Jon Lloyd, senior advisor at Global Witness. “So we wanted to really test out their systems with enough time for them to act. And with the U.S. midterms around the corner, Meta simply has to get this right — and right now.”

Brazil’s national elections will be held on Oct. 2 amid high tensions and disinformation threatening to discredit the electoral process. Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the country. In a statement, Meta said it has “ prepared extensively for the 2022 election in Brazil.”

“We’ve launched tools that promote reliable information and label election-related posts, established a direct channel for the Superior Electoral Court to send us potentially-harmful content for review, and continue closely collaborating with Brazilian authorities and researchers,” the company said.

In 2020 Facebook began requiring advertisers who wish to run ads about elections or politics to complete an authorization process and include “Paid for by” disclaimers on these ads, similar to what it does in the U.S. The increased safeguards follow the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, when Russia used rubles to pay for political ads designed to stoke divisions and unrest among Americans.

Global Witness said it broke these rules when it submitted the test ads (which were approved for publication but were never actually published). The group placed the ads from outside Brazil, from Nairobi and London, which should have raised red flags.

It was also not required to put a “paid for by” disclaimer on the ads and did not use a Brazilian payment method — all safeguards Facebook says it had put in place to prevent misuse of its platform by malicious actors trying to intervene in elections around the world.

“What’s quite clear from the results of this investigation and others is that their content moderation capabilities and the integrity systems that they deploy in order to mitigate some of the risk during election periods, it’s just not working,” Lloyd said.

The group is using ads as a test and not regular posts because Meta claims to hold advertisements to an “even stricter” standard than regular, unpaid posts, according to its help center page for paid advertisements.

But judging from the four investigations, Lloyd said that’s not actually clear.

“We we are constantly having to take Facebook at their word. And without a verified independent third party audit, we just can’t hold Meta or any other tech company accountable for what they say they’re doing,” he said.

Global Witness submitted ten ads to Meta that obviously violated its policies around election-related advertising. They included false information about when and where to vote, for instance and called into question the integrity of Brazil’s voting machines — echoing disinformation used by malicious actors to destabilize democracies around the world.

This will be Brazil’s first election since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking reelection, came to power. Bolsonaro has repeatedly attacked the integrity of the country’s election systems.

“Disinformation featured heavily in its 2018 election, and this year’s election is already marred by reports of widespread disinformation, spread from the very top: Bolsonaro is already seeding doubt about the legitimacy of the election result, leading to fears of a United States-inspired January 6 ‘stop the steal’ style coup attempt,” Global Witness said.

In its previous investigations, the group found that Facebook did not catch hate speech in Myanmar, where ads used a slur to refer to people of east Indian or Muslim origin and call for their deaths; in Ethiopia, where the ads used dehumanizing hate speech to call for the murder of people belonging to each of Ethiopia’s three main ethnic groups; and in Kenya, where the ads spoke of beheadings, rape and bloodshed.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The FBI and U.S Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have warned law enforcement agencies of an increase in threats following a search of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last week.

DHS confirmed to Reuters it had sent a bulletin on Friday on the threats, but declined to share it. CNN, NBC and CBS have reported on the contents of the bulletin.

“The FBI and DHS have observed an increase in threats to federal law enforcement and, to a lesser extent, other law enforcement and government officials following the FBI’s recent execution of a search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida,” the bulletin said, according to a CBS report.

Among concerns cited in the memo was “a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” CBS reported. U.S. agencies have identified “multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant.”

Most threats are occurring online, the bulletin said, according to reports.

The warrant made public on Friday after the unprecedented search on Monday showed that Republican Trump had 11 sets of classified documents at his home, and that the Justice Department had probable cause to conduct the search based on possible Espionage Act violations.

Republicans stepped up calls on Sunday for the release of an FBI affidavit showing the justification for its seizure of the documents.

Trump, his allies, some Republicans in Congress and many conservative pundits have responded with anger directed at the FBI and officials involved in the investigation of Trump, and messages to their supporters claiming without evidence that the FBI would target them next.

Some Trump allies have compared the FBI to the “Gestapo,” others are calling for its funding to be halted, and some accused the agency of being politically motivated.

An armed man who tried to breach the FBI building in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Thursday was shot dead by police following a car chase, a gun battle and a standoff in a cornfield.

The FBI declined to confirm the existence of the bulletin on Sunday, but said “The FBI is always concerned about violence and threats of violence to law enforcement.”

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said on Twitter “the details of this DHS/FBI bulletin are stunning. Let’s be clear: this is the direct result of irresponsible, inflammatory rhetoric demonizing law enforcement from right-wing politicians and commentators.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson and David Lawder; Editing by Heather Timmons and Grant McCool)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A lawyer for former U.S. President Donald Trump signed a statement in June that said all classified material held in boxes at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence had been returned to the government, the New York Times reported on Saturday.

The statement was signed after Jay Bratt, a top national security official in the U.S. Department of Justice, visited Trump’s South Florida beach club on June 3, the New York Times reported. Bratt met with two Trump lawyers to discuss the handling of classified information during the visit, the newspaper said.

Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to spy for another country or mishandle U.S. defense information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant made public on Friday showed.

FBI agents searched Mar-a-Lago this week and removed 11 sets of classified documents including some marked as top secret, according to the Justice Department.

The existence of the Trump attorney statement suggests that Trump and his team may not have fully disclosed information about classified documents in the former president’s residence, the Times reported.

Reuters was not able to independently confirm the report. The Justice Department declined to comment.

Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, criticized the FBI search in a statement as an “unprecedented and unnecessary raid” that was part of another “Democrat-fabricated witch hunt.”

Budowich did not confirm or deny the New York Times report.

The chairs of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee and the Committee on Oversight and Reform on Saturday asked the director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, to review what damage may have been done to national security by Trump’s having the highly classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.

“Former President Trump’s conduct has potentially put our national security at grave risk. This issue demands a full review, in addition to the ongoing law enforcement inquiry,” the two committee chairs, both Democrats, said in a three-page letter, which they publicly released.

Representative Carolyn Maloney is chair of the Oversight Committee, and Representative Adam Schiff is chair of the Intelligence Committee.

(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Rami Ayyub and Idrees Ali; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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By Steve Holland and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The seizure of classified U.S. government documents from Donald Trump’s sprawling Mar-a-Lago retreat spotlights the ongoing national security concerns presented by the former president, and the home he dubbed the Winter White House, some security experts say.

Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to spy for another country or mishandle U.S. defense information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant shows.

As president, Trump sometimes shared information, regardless of its sensitivity. Early in his presidency, he spontaneously gave highly classified information to Russia’s foreign minister about a planned Islamic State operation while he was in the Oval Office, U.S. officials said at the time.

But it was at Mar-a-Lago, where well-heeled members and guests attended weddings and fundraising dinners and frolicked on a breezy ocean patio, that U.S. intelligence seemed especially at risk.

The Secret Service said when Trump was president that it does not determine who is granted access to the club, but does do physical screenings to make sure no one brings in prohibited items, and further screening for guests in proximity to the president and other protectees.

The Justice Department’s search warrant raises concerns about national security, said former DOJ official Mary McCord.

“Clearly they thought it was very serious to get these materials back into secured space,” McCord said. “Even just retention of highly classified documents in improper storage – particularly given Mar-a-Lago, the foreign visitors there and others who might have connections with foreign governments and foreign agents – creates a significant national security threat.”

Trump, in a statement on his social media platform, said the records were “all declassified” and placed in “secure storage.”

McCord said, however, she saw no “plausible argument that he had made a conscious decision about each one of these to declassify them before he left.” After leaving office, she said, he did not have the power to declassify information.

Monday’s seizure by FBI agents of multiple sets of documents and dozens of boxes, including information about U.S. defense and a reference to the “French President,” poses a frightening scenario for intelligence professionals.

“It’s a nightmarish environment for a careful handling of highly classified information,” said a former U.S. intelligence officer. “It’s just a nightmare.”

The DOJ hasn’t provided specific information about how or where the documents and photos had been stored, but the club’s general vulnerabilities have been well documented.

In a high profile example, Trump huddled in 2017 with Japan’s then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at an outdoor dinner table while guests hovered nearby, listening and taking photos that they later posted on Twitter.

The dinner was disrupted by a North Korean missile test, and guests listened as Trump and Abe figured out what to say in response. After issuing a statement, Trump dropped by a wedding party at the club.

“What we saw was Trump be so lax in security that he was having a sensitive meeting regarding a potential war topic where non-U.S. government personnel could observe and photograph,” said Mark Zaid, a lawyer who specializes in national security cases. “It would have been easy for someone to also have had a device that heard and recorded what Trump was saying as well.”

The White House press secretary at the time of the Abe visit, Sean Spicer, told reporters afterward that Trump had been briefed about the North Korean launch in a secure room at Mar-a-Lago. He played down the scene on the patio.

“At that time, apparently there was a photo taken, which everyone jumped to nefarious conclusions about what may or may not be discussed. There was simply a discussion about press logistics, where to host the event,” he said.

It was in the secure room at Mar-a-Lago where Trump decided to launch airstrikes against Syria for the use of chemical weapons in April 2017.

The decision made, Trump repaired to dinner with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping. Over a dessert of chocolate cake, Trump informed Xi about the airstrikes.

In 2019, a Chinese woman who passed security checkpoints at the club carrying a thumb drive coded with “malicious” software was arrested for entering a restricted property and making false statements to officials, authorities said at the time.

Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly launched an effort to try to limit who had access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, but the effort fizzled when Trump refused to cooperate, aides said at the time.

(The story adds dropped word “been” in paragraph 16.)

(Reporting By Steve Holland and Karen Freifeld; Editing by Heather Timmons, William Mallard and Daniel Wallis)

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GARDNERVILLE, Nev. (AP) — Standing in front of 1,500 Republicans at a rural ranch backdropped by the Sierra Nevada mountains, Nevada’s Republican governor candidate Joe Lombardo referenced the “elephant in the room” without naming him.

The second-place finisher in the gubernatorial primary, Reno attorney Joey Gilbert, has baselessly claimed the mathematical counting was off and has continued to attack Lombardo. Lombardo to this point hasn’t addressed Gilbert directly, who requested a statewide recount of the results and later filed a lawsuit that was thrown out last week. He didn’t say Gilbert’s name on Saturday either, but acknowledged “we haven’t come together” since the primary.

“No matter who you voted for, we’ve got to get past that,” he said.

At the 7th annual Basque Fry, Republican heavyweights were eager to unite against incumbent Democrats at what has become a yearly tradition held in rural Douglas County. The event, which includes live music, an inflatable rodeo ride and Basque cuisine, is modeled after Adam Laxalt’s grandfather and former Nevada governor Paul Laxalt’s cookouts. The elder Laxalt was the son of Basque immigrants, and Adam now hosts the event with the Morning in Nevada PAC.

National and state politicians fired up the crowd with a message of urgency 80 days before midterm elections that will decide which party controls both the State House in Carson City and Congress in Washington D.C. Speaking to reporters before he took the state, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called Laxalt’s race “the single best pickup opportunity for Republicans.”

“Part of the reason is that Adam managed to unify the Republican Party early,” Cruz said. “There are all sorts of different slices and flavors of Republicans state by state. And one of the challenges we have in some of the other states is we have candidates who came through pretty rocky primaries, where there’s still some bruised feelings.”

Some speakers referenced the new IRS agents included in the Inflation Reduction Act as an example of government overreach, though the amount of employees hired from the IRA was often skewed. Others urged attendees to do even more than they had in campaigning and to not take the “Red Wave” for granted.

Several speakers, including Cruz and Laxalt, condemned the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Laxalt called it an example of “weaponizing the FBI” — a rally cry that many Republican lawmakers have made in the past week to tap into voter outrage.

The main theme centered on unity in often razor-thin races.

“If we lose in Nevada, we lose everything,” said conservative author and commentator Kurt Schlichter, who added he was optimistic for the state after seeing Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s win in Virginia last November.

Behind the long tents around the stage was a set of smaller tents akin to a farmers market, selling merchandise and offering pamphlets for conservative cause: A “Save our Douglas Schools” tent for county board trustee nominees; Power2Parent tent which advocates for school choice and against sex education; merchandise stands with cowboy hats that say “Trump Won” and “Texans for Trump,” alongside “Not my dictator” shirts featuring Joe Biden with a photoshopped Hitler mustache.

Some politicians walked around the tents, interacting with supporters.

The campaign of U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto sent out a statement on Saturday about the event, calling Laxalt the “face of the Big Lie, a reference to when Laxalt spearheaded in Trump’s 2020 Nevada campaign and ensuing legal challenges to the vote-counting process.

“Laxalt is willing to break the rules, promising to file early lawsuits to help him gain power, because he’s only out for himself, not Nevada,” said spokesperson Josh Marcus-Blank.

Alongside Cruz, headliners included Schlichter, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, among others.

Noem, who gained notoriety among Republicans for bucking federal mandates in the throes of the pandemic, talked about her upbringing in South Dakota, her father’s influence on her before he died while she was in college and her philosophy for not adhering to COVID-19 shutdown during 2020. She spoke of the state’s zero corporate income tax and 4.5% sales tax.

“This can be your story,” she said. “Leadership has consequences.”

Laxalt was one of the last to take the stage and reflected on the Basque Fry a year ago, just days before he announced his Senate run. He said the left has since taken over media, big tech and “ruling elites.” He talked of surging crime in major cities and what he has often characterized as the border crisis. He called Masto Biden’s “rubber stamp” for signing the Inflation Reduction Act and repeated that “the entire US Senate will hinge on this race.”

“Whatever you’ve done to help with politics in the past, do more,” he told supporters. “We need you now more than ever.”

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Stern is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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