A new CNN report confirms documents identified as top secret or higher — including items designated as classified — were left at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida even after the National Archives recovered over a dozen boxes of federal records from the property back in January.
High-ranking Justice Department officials took possession of the additional documents at a June meeting at the Trump resort, according to the CNN report. A grand jury subpoena for records from the Trump administration that were at the Trump property in southern Florida was issued before the June gathering, and the records handed off to Justice Department officials were apparently covered by that subpoena. Earlier this week, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, reportedly seeking additional classified documents that were potentially still at the Trump property. The National Archives previously stated it found classified documents among the boxes the agency obtained from Trump’s team earlier this year.
“The 15 boxes contained some materials that were part of special access programs (SAP), a classification that includes protocols to significantly limit who would have access to the information,” CNN explains. That’s the January cache of materials recovered by the agency, the first of what’s now potentially three reclamations of government documents from Trump. This week, FBI agents eventually took an additional collection of boxes — reportedly numbering about ten — from the southern Florida Trump property. Hardly any details are publicly available about what might have been in those boxes, although Trump’s team was evidently provided with information about what agents seized — something the former president is seemingly keeping hidden at this point. Other investigative steps taken by federal authorities include interviews with Mar-a-Lago staff and former White House officials regarding the handling of docs.
U.S. authorities also subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, a demand with which Trump’s team reportedly complied. That demand related to concerns about potential access to the federal documents at Trump’s property by persons unauthorized to handle the materials. Trump personally showed up when Justice Department personnel trekked down to his southern Florida property in June, but the former president didn’t stick around. It sounds so far as though there was just one trip by federal investigators to the resort that month.
Trump’s attorneys brought out and handed over classified docs while investigators were visiting in June. While federal records that federal law demanded be provided to U.S. record-keeping authorities were at the Trump property in the time since Donald left the White House, he wasn’t careful with them. As explained in The New York Times, he’d at times “wave things like the North Korean leader’s letters at people, as if they were collectors’ items he was showing off.”
There’s no real-world evidence that Trump was targeted on the basis of his politics. There’s no credible indication available that the president and his team at the White House knew about the Mar-a-Lago raid before it happened, and when Attorney General Merrick Garland was preparing to provide remarks assumed to be connected to the situation on Thursday, a high-ranking White House official indicated the Biden team didn’t know what Garland would be saying. “We have had no notice that he was giving remarks and no briefing on the content of them,” that administration official said.
