The Justice Department claimed in a release that the classified documents they reportedly seized during a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home were “likely concealed and removed” from a storage room at the Florida estate as part of an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into the discovery of the government records.
The FBI also claimed it seized boxes and containers holding more than 100 classified records during its unprecedented Aug. 8 search and found classified documents stashed in Trump’s office.
That’s according to the authorities, who filed their claims to the court late Tuesday. The filing lays out the most detailed chronology to date of months of interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the documents.
The purpose of the Tuesday night filing was fight back against a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during this month’s search and to return to him certain seized property. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter on Thursday.
Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
Trump and his lawyers have claimed the FBI’s search of his residence was unnecessary because his lawyers were cooperating with the National Archives. Trump has also claimed he declassified all the documents he held prior to leaving office.
Trump responded to the feds’ claims on social media, blasting the release of photos of documents allegedly found in his personal office —
Terrible the way the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see. Thought they wanted them kept Secret? Lucky I Declassified!
The DOJ filing offers yet another indication of the volume of classified records reportedly retrieved from Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.
The authorities also included a picture of some of the seized documents with colored cover sheets indicating their classified status.
The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on the floor by FBI agents at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box clearly filled with Trump’s personal items, including a Time magazine cover.
NEWS: DOJ's new filing includes. photo of the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. https://t.co/nm567c96bi pic.twitter.com/0U2hoSogxQ
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 31, 2022
The Justice Department filing does not resolve a core question that has driven public fascination with the investigation — why authorities think Trump held onto the documents after he left the White House and why, the government claims, he and his team resisted repeated efforts to give them back.
Though Trump insisted again Wednesday that he had declassified the documents at Mar-a-Lago. However, the Feds claim his lawyers did not suggest that during the visit and instead “handled them in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified,” the Justice Department said.
FBI agents who went there to receive additional materials were given “a single Redweld envelope, double-wrapped in tape, containing the documents,” the filing states.
That envelope, according to the FBI, contained 38 unique documents with classification markings, including 16 documents marked secret and 17 marked top secret.
The stunning federal investigation began from a referral from the National Archives and Records Administration. Before the unprecedented FBI raid, Trump and his team had already given dozens of boxes of documents requested by federal authorities.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article