Interest at the Justice Department in the handling of classified documents from the Trump administration is broader than previously known. According to a new report from Rolling Stone, agents have scrutinized the prospect that documents the government would want to see returned were transported to another Trump property besides Mar-a-Lago.
That southern Florida Trump resort is, of course, where the FBI conducted a raid in early August, recovering around 100 documents marked classified — and disproving an earlier statement signed by a Trump attorney insisting all docs Trump still had that were marked classified, which were demanded by a Justice Department subpoena, were getting returned to authorities. Now, according to details included in Rolling Stone, investigators have expressed suspicions about Trump Tower in New York City and the ex-president’s Bedminster golf club, which is in New Jersey. They’ve directly inquired of “multiple witnesses if they knew whether Donald Trump had stashed any highly sensitive government documents” at either property, per the publication. Agents also asked about Trump’s more general habits, including whether he tended to move classified docs from the Florida resort to another property tied to him.
“It was obvious they wanted to know if this went beyond just Mar-a-Lago,” per a source for Rolling Stone. The report from that publication doesn’t specify whether investigators have determined that there is any substantive cause to believe Trump stored classified materials at another of his properties, although even the possibility of agents concluding as much would no doubt leave Trump allies worried, considering the FBI conducted a raid of Mar-a-Lago: unprecedented in its targeting of a former president, who himself proved the foundation for it, and that he was the origin point for things getting “unprecedented,” when agents found classified materials at Mar-a-Lago. There has been recent reporting from the Times about concerns expressed by the Justice Department to Trump’s legal team about the possibility Trump was harboring even more documents than what investigators have already recovered. Christopher Kise, a Trump attorney, reportedly proposed a voluntary search by the former president.
With the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals having approved the investigative usage of documents marked classified that were seized from Mar-a-Lago, the department’s probe is proceeding to a far greater extent than Trump would no doubt prefer. The department and Trump are now squaring off in the 11th Circuit over what’s known as a special master, meaning a court-appointed third party, having been selected at all. In addition, Trump has challenged the approval of investigators using a portion of the seized documents at the U.S. Supreme Court.
