The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security have issued an unclassified joint intelligence bulletin warning of a spike in threats to federal law enforcement officials since the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-lago club in Florida, two senior law enforcement officials told NBC News.
“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, dated Friday, reads, according to one official.
The bulletin, which advises that such threats are coming from online and other platforms, was sent out of an abundance of caution, according to the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters.
It calls on officials to be aware of issues surrounding domestic violent extremists, past and present incidents as well as past behaviors, and to be vigilant, the officials said.
An incident in which a man fired a nail gun into the FBI Cincinnati field office is cited in the bulletin as one of the attacks on federal law enforcement, they added.
The FBI searched Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago on Monday. A senior government official told NBC News that the FBI was at the location “for the majority of the day” and confirmed that the search warrant was connected to the National Archives.
Trump received a federal grand jury subpoena this past spring for sensitive documents the government believed he retained after his departure from the White House, a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to NBC News Thursday.
The property receipt of items recovered by FBI agents who searched the location shows that agents recovered a trove of top secret and other highly classified documents, according to court documents unsealed Friday by a federal judge in Florida.
Federal agents removed 11 sets of classified documents, including some that were labeled secret and top secret, according to documents obtained by NBC News shortly before the judge unsealed them. Among the items the FBI took was a handwritten note, information about the “President of France,” an executive granting of clemency for Trump ally Roger Stone and binders of photos.
There were also papers described as “SCI” documents, which stands for highly classified “sensitive compartmented information.” The DOJ filed a notice Friday saying Trump did not oppose the unsealing.
While Trump and his allies have suggested that any documents in his possession had been declassified by him while he was in office, three laws cited in the search warrant do not specify that the mishandled documents had to have been classified.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich was dismissive of details in the documents in a statement Friday, calling it an “outrageous” search and a “botched raid.”
Marc Caputo, Rebecca Shabad, Dareh Gregorian and Ryan J. Reilly contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
