Reports: Trump unit held classified items
Lawyers for Donald Trump found at least two items marked classified after an outside team hired by Trump searched a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Fla., used by the former president, according to people familiar with the matter.
Those items were immediately turned over to the FBI, according to those people, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
The search was one of at least three searches for classified materials conducted by an outside team at Trump properties in recent weeks, after Trump’s legal team was pressed by a federal judge to attest that it had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena to turn over all materials bearing classified markings, according to people familiar with the matter.
There has been a lengthy and fierce battle between Trump’s attorneys and the Justice Department in a Washington federal court in recent weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. Much of the legal wrangling remains under seal by a federal judge, but people familiar with the matter say the Justice Department has raised concerns about what prosecutors view as a longstanding failure to fully comply with the May subpoena by Trump’s team.
Emails released by the General Services Administration, which assists former presidents during their transition to private life, show the government agency helped rent the storage unit at a private facility in West Palm Beach on July 21, 2021. The unit was needed to store items that had been held at an office in Northern Virginia used by
Trump staffers in the months just after he left office.
There was no cataloguing of what was put in the storage unit, Trump advisers said.
The Washington Post could not immediately determine specifically what was in the items marked classified. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ultimate significance of the classified material in the storage unit is not immediately clear, but its presence there indicates Mar-a-lago was not the only place where Trump kept classified material. It also provides further evidence that Trump and his team did not fully comply with a May grand jury subpoena that sought all documents marked classified still in possession of the post-presidential office.
In addition to the storage unit, the team hired an outside company to carry out the search of Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and, more recently, Trump Tower in New York, according to people familiar with the matter. The outside team also searched at least one other property.