More Classified Docs Discovered in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Bedroom Months After FBI Raid
AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool
Court documents revealed on Tuesday that former President Donald Trump’s lawyers found additional classified documents in his bedroom some four months after the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago to retrieve documents. The FBI searched Trump’s residence in August of 2022 after his lawyers gave a certified letter to authorities claiming there were no more documents on the property, despite the National Archives still asking for specific materials to be returned.
Trump’s classified documents trial has been postponed as the judge he appointed sorts through a multitude of pre-trial motions.
Politico’s Kyle Cheney noted how Tuesday’s news became public, writing that the “revelation was among several cited by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in a newly unsealed 2023 opinion that found prosecutors had presented compelling evidence that Trump knowingly stashed national security documents in his home and then tried to conceal them when the Justice Department tried to retrieve them.”
“Notably, no excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” Howell wrote in the opinion from last year.
Cheney added that Howell opinion included some other bombshells. “In a footnote, Howell also noted that another Trump adviser connected to his Save America PAC had acknowledged scanning the contents of the box that contained the classified materials in 2021 and storing them on a personal laptop provided by the PAC,” Cheney reported, adding, “Trump’s office provided the box that contained the four records to the FBI in January 2023, Howell noted.”
Trump is currently facing a 37-count federal indictment for his retention of classified documents and alleged schemes to retain them despite authorities demanding their return. The indictment includes a transcript of Trump on tape allegedly waiving around a top-secret war plan in front of a ghostwriter and acknowledging the document was not declassified when asked.
