A 10-inch-thick binder consisting of around 3,000 pages of top-secret material linked to the US probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and Moscow’s connection with former President Donald Trump has been missing since the final days of his presidency, CNN reported.
The Russia-related materials included highly classified raw intelligence obtained by the US and its Nato allies, triggering alarm that the methods used to gather the information could be compromised, news agency Reuters reported.
Furthermore, the Russia intelligence was coupled with other documents in the binder that Trump instructed the CIA to send to the White House before he left office, so he could declassify the materials connected with the FBI probe of Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, the Reuters report added.
The disappearance of the binder has raised alarms in the US intelligence community because some of the “closely guarded national security secrets from the US and its allies could be exposed”, CNN reported.
John Soloman, a conservative journalist, had filed a federal court document in August this year, in which the binder’s thickness was mentioned. Trump appointed Soloman to be a representative authorised to go through the records of his presidency in the National Archives.
The court document revealed that Mark Meadows, who served as Trump’s last Chief of Staff, was involved in handling the missing binder and orchestrating a strategy with Soloman to release the confidential materials that the former US President planned to declassify.
