This week, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) joined those ripping Donald Trump’s handling of classified government documents that were harbored at Mar-a-Lago, the former president’s southern Florida property where he has largely resided since leaving office.
Kinzinger responded to an image included in a new Justice Department court filing that depicted classified materials recovered from a personal office for Trump on the grounds of Mar-a-Lago. The materials, which are partly redacted in the image, were recovered by FBI agents during the agency’s recent raid of the property, which took place amid a broader criminal investigation into the handling of sensitive records from Trump’s administration. Prior to the raid, a lawyer for Trump — former federal prosecutor Evan Corcoran, it seems — insisted all government materials, classified or otherwise, that remained at Mar-a-Lago were in a single storage area at the property, adding that a comprehensive search was supposedly conducted for materials covered by a grand jury subpoena demanding that any documents marked classified be returned to federal authorities.
Notably, Corcoran refused to allow Justice Department personnel to personally examine boxes in the disputed storage room during a June gathering at Mar-a-Lago in which officials from the department were provided with additional classified materials. Despite separate claims of executive privilege and a dubiously alleged declassification of the documents by Trump, neither Corcoran nor Christina Bobb, another Trump lawyer, brought up either notion during the June gathering, the Justice Department said. Declassifying the materials, which Trump had the power to do as president, wouldn’t necessarily absolve him of legal liability. For one, obstruction is among the potential crimes about which investigators were seriously concerned.
“This makes me beyond angry,” Kinzinger remarked. “When I get access to these types of docs they are in a scif, I can’t take notes, and someone is in the room with me. Trump doesn’t care about this country. Hey @EliseStefanik and @GOPLeader you ok with this???” A SCIF is a sensitive compartmented information facility, which is a variety of set-up designed to protect highly guarded U.S. government information — including of the sort found at Trump’s property in the raid. Some of the materials found in Trump’s personal office, according to the photograph, included information related to obtaining intelligence from covert human sources. Revealing the contents of such documents could put sources in lethal danger via seeing their identities exposed — and an affidavit used in the process of the Justice Department seeking a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago confirmed the property evidently wasn’t secure to an extent sufficient for storing classified documents.
This makes me beyond angry. When I get access to these types of docs they are in a scif, I can’t take notes, and someone is in the room with me. Trump doesn’t care about this country. Hey @EliseStefanik and @GOPLeader you ok with this??? https://t.co/eZY1CA5lP4
— Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ (@AdamKinzinger) August 31, 2022
