At least one lawyer for former President Donald Trump signed a written statement in June saying all documents marked classified and kept in boxes in a storage area at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government, said four people who saw the document.
Posted at 7:00 a.m.
The written statement was made after a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
The existence of this signed statement, which had not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Mr. Trump or his team have not been entirely candid with federal investigators about these documents.
It could also help explain why a potential violation of a criminal law relating to obstruction was cited by the Department as one of the reasons it requested the warrant used to conduct the daylong search of the home. of the former president on Monday, an extraordinary step that sent political shock waves.
It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the Justice Department to conduct this search after months of trying to resolve the case through discussions with Mr. Trump and his team.
An inventory of documents seized from Mr. Trump’s home, released on Friday, shows that FBI agents seized 11 sets of documents marked confidential or secret, some marked “classified/TS/SCI”, short for “top compartmentalized secret/sensitive information”.
Information so classified should only be viewed in secure government facilities.
PHOTO STEVE HELBER, ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES
Mar-a-Lago, owned by former President Donald Trump
The search covered not only the storage area where the boxes of known Justice Department documents were located, but also Mr. Trump’s office and residence. The search warrant and inventory released on Friday did not specify where in the Mar-a-Lago complex the documents marked as classified were found.
Mr. Trump said on Friday that he had declassified all documents in his possession while still in office. He did not provide any document confirming this.
A “standing order”
During an appearance on Fox News Friday night, right-wing writer John Solomon, whom Trump has designated as one of his representatives to interact with the National Archives, read a statement from the former president’s office saying that Trump had a “standing order” that documents taken out of the Oval Office and brought to the White House residence “were deemed declassified when he removed them.”
A spokesman for the former president, Taylor Budowich, said on Saturday, “Like all Democratic-fabricated witch hunts before, the waters of this unprecedented and unnecessary raid are carried by a media ready to run with suggestive leaks, anonymous sources and no hard facts. »
The search warrant indicates that FBI agents were conducting the search for evidence related to possible violations of the Obstruction of Justice Act as well as the Espionage Act and a law prohibiting unlawful taking or destruction of government records or documents.
No one has been charged in this case, and the search warrant does not in itself mean that anyone will be.
Last year, officials at the National Archives discovered that Mr. Trump had taken a large number of documents and other government materials with him when he left the White House at the end of his tumultuous term in January. 2021. This material was supposed to be sent to the archives under the Presidential Archives Act.
Back to events
Mr Trump returned 15 boxes of documents in January this year. When archivists reviewed the material, they found numerous pages of documents marked as classified and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which opened an investigation and convened a grand jury.
In the spring, the Department issued Mr. Trump a subpoena to obtain additional documents that he said may have been in his possession. Advisers have repeatedly urged the former president to return what remains, despite what they described as his continued desire to keep certain documents.
In a bid to resolve the dispute, Mr. Bratt and other officials traveled to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., in early June and met briefly with Mr. Trump while there. . Two of Mr. Trump’s attorneys, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, spoke with Mr. Bratt and a small number of investigators he traveled with, according to people briefed on the meeting.
Mr. Corcoran and Mr.me Bobb showed Mr. Bratt and his team boxes containing equipment that Mr. Trump had taken from the White House and were kept in a storage area, those people said.
According to two people briefed on the visit, Mr. Bratt and his team left with additional documents marked as classified and also obtained at that time the written statement from a lawyer for Mr. Trump stating that all documents so marked as classified in the boxes had been handed over.
Shortly after the meeting, according to those briefed, Mr. Bratt emailed Corcoran asking him to get a more secure padlock for the room.
The Justice Department also obtained surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, including views from outside the storage room. According to a person familiar with the situation, the footage raised concerns among investigators about the handling of the material. It is not known exactly when these images date from.
Over the past few months, investigators have been in contact with half a dozen current aides to Mr. Trump who had knowledge of how the documents were being handled, two people familiar with the proceedings said. At least one witness gave investigators information that led them to want to press Trump further for documents, according to a person familiar with the progress of the investigation.
This article was originally published in the New York Times.