Trump search: What may come next in inquiry with legal peril
WASHINGTON
A newly released FBI document helps flesh out the contours of an investigation into classified material at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate. But plenty of quesrun. tions remain, especially because half the affidavit, which spelled out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property, was blacked out.
That document, which the FBI submitted so it could get a warrant to search Trump’s winter home, provides new details about the volume and top secret nature of what was retrieved from Mar-a-Lago in January. It shows how Justice Department officials had raised concerns months before the search that closely held government secrets were being illegally stored – and then returned in August with a court-approved warrant and located even more classified records at the property.
It all raises questions whether a crime was committed and, if so, by whom. Answers may not come quickly.
A department official this month described the investigation as in its early stages, suggesting more work is ahead as investigators review the documents they removed and continue interviewing witnesses. Intelligence officials will simultaneously conduct an assessment of any risk to national security potentially created by the documents being disclosed.
At a minimum, the investigation presents a political distraction for Trump as he lays the groundwork for a potential presidential
WHAT IS THE FBI INVESTIGATING?
None of the government’s legal filings released so far singles out Trump — or anyone else — as a potential target of the investigation. But the warrant and accompanying affidavit make clear the investigation is active and criminal in nature.
The department is investigating potential violations of multiple laws, including an Espionage Act statute that governs gathering, transmitting or losing national defense information. The other laws deal with the mutilation and removal of records as well as well as the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
The inquiry began quietly with a referral from the National Archives and Records Administration, which retrieved 15 boxes of records from Mar-a-Lago in January — 14 of which were found to contain classified information. All told, the FBI affidavit said, officials found 184 documents bearing classification markings, including some suggesting they contained information from highly sensitive human sources. Several had what appeared to be Trump’s handwritten notes, the affidavit says.
The FBI has spent months investigating how the documents made their way from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and whether any other classified records might exist at the property.
WILL ANYONE BE CHARGED?
It’s hard to say at this point. To get a search warrant, federal agents must persuade a judge that probable cause exists to believe there’s evidence of a crime at the location they want to search.
But search warrants aren’t automatic precursors to a criminal prosecution and they certainly don’t signal that charges are imminent.
Attorney General Merrick Garland hasn’t revealed his thinking on the matter. Asked last month about Trump in the context of a separate investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, he responded that “no person is above the law.”
WHAT HAS TRUMP ARGUED?
A letter made public as part of the affidavit forecasts the arguments the Trump legal team intends to advance as the investigation proceeds. The May 25 letter from lawyer M. Evan Corcoran to Jay Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, articulates a robust, expansive view of executive power.
Corcoran asserted that it was a “bedrock principle” that a president has absolute authority to declassify documents — though he doesn’t actually say that Trump did so.
He also said the primary law governing the mishandling of classified information doesn’t apply to the president.