Information on foreign country's nuclear readiness seized from Trump home, report says

Document is so highly classified that many top security officials are not authorised to see it

A document containing highly classified information on a foreign country's nuclear capabilities was recovered at former US president Donald Trump's home in Palm Beach, Florida. EPA

One of the classified documents seized from former president Donald Trump's home in Florida contained intelligence on a foreign country's nuclear readiness, the Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources.

Some of the documents found at Mr Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence are so secret that many top security officials are not privy to them. Only the president, some of his Cabinet members or near-Cabinet officials could authorise other government officials to access them, the Post reported. Such documents require special clearance on a need-to-know basis as opposed to just top-secret clearance.

The report did not name the country whose nuclear capabilities were mentioned in the document.

Nor did it state where the document was found. However, officials told the Post that the information was unearthed in the Justice Department's court-authorised search on August 8.

The FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mr Trump's estate in Palm Beach this year, including 33 boxes that contained more than 100 classified records during their raid last month.

Agents found material so sensitive that “even the FBI counter-intelligence personnel and DOJ [Department of Justice] attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents", a court filing said.

In a court filing, the agency said that records at Mar-a-Lago “were likely concealed and removed” in an effort to obstruct the government's investigation into his handling of records since leaving the White House last year.

The FBI recovered 184 documents from Mar-a-Lago in January and an additional 38 handed over by Trump lawyers in June, but the department found “multiple sources of evidence” that top secret documents were still at the residence.

A federal judge on Monday granted Mr Trump's request to appoint a special master to review records seized by the FBI during its August 8 search, a move that will probably delay its investigation.

The justice department had argued that appointing a special master was unnecessary because it had already reviewed potential privileged documents and identified a limited number of materials that could be covered by attorney-client privilege. Mr Trump also was not entitled to have the records returned to him because they belong to the US government, the department argued.