Donald Trump Had 'More than 300' Classified Documents at Mar-a-Lago: Report
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Joe Raedle/Getty. Inset: Zach Gibson - Pool/Getty Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Inset: Donald Trump.
Just weeks after the FBI searched former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida, new reports are detailing just how many classified documents may have been kept in the resort.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that more than 300 classified documents were found at Mar-a-Lago and recovered by the federal government in recent months.
Roughly 150 of those classified documents, the Times reports, were handed over to the National Archives in January — but Trump himself went through them before handing them over.
Elsewhere in its report, the Times details how Trump fought the federal government's attempts to retrieve the documents, reportedly telling his attorneys, "It's not theirs, it's mine." According to the Presidential Records Act — passed in response to the Nixon Watergate scandal — any documents accrued during a presidency belong to the federal government, not the president.
A separate report by Politico backs the Times' reporting that an abundance of classified documents was recovered, citing correspondence between the National Archives and Trump's legal team that shows the Archives recovered "more than 700 pages of classified material," including "some of the most highly classified secrets in government" at Mar-a-Lago in January.
"As you are no doubt aware, NARA had ongoing communications with the former President's representatives throughout 2021 about what appeared to be missing Presidential records, which resulted in the transfer of 15 boxes of records to NARA in January 2022," National Archivist Debra Wall wrote in a May 10 letter to Trump's attorney Evan Corcoran. "In its initial review of materials within those boxes, NARA identified items marked as classified national security information, up to the level of Top Secret and including Sensitive Compartmented Information and Special Access Program materials."
According to the Times, after reviewing security footage taken at Mar-a-Lago and interviewing aides, investigators were concerned some classified documents remained at the resort. So on Aug. 8, agents returned with a search warrant.
Days after their search, the search and seizure warrant along with the signed receipt from the Mar-a-Lago search were unsealed by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, revealing that 11 sets of classified documents were among the inventory of the items taken in the search.
Some of those remaining documents were marked as top secret, which the Wall Street Journal notes should only be available in special government facilities.
Trump is now seeking to block the Department of Justice from "further review" of the documents from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. In papers filed in the U.S. District Court's Southern District of Florida and obtained by CNBC on Monday, the former president, through his counsel, asks that the government not be allowed to look at the documents until a "Special Master" is appointed.
The filing says that the government told Trump's lawyers that "privileged and/or potentially privileged documents" were seized, but specifics of what exactly was taken have yet to be provided.
"Significantly, the Government has refused to provide President Trump with any reason for the unprecedented, general search of his home," the complaint says, noting Attorney General Merrick Garland's motion to unseal the search warrant.
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Arguing that the documents seized were created when Trump was president, his lawyers state that they are "'presumptively privileged' until proven otherwise," and a Special Master is the only one who can protect their "sanctity."
