TRUMP LAWYER TOLD DOJ MATERIAL WAS RETURNED

Signed statement could help explain impetus for raid

At least one lawyer for former President Donald Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Trump’s Mar-alago residence and club had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit June 3 to Mar-a-lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department’s national security division.

The existence of the signed declaration, which has not previously been reported, is a possible indication that Trump or his team were not fully forthcoming with federal investigators about the material. And it could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home Monday, an extraordinary step that generated political shock waves.

It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the Justice Department’s decision to conduct the search after months in which it had tried to resolve the matter through discussions with Trump and his team.

An inventory of the material taken from Trump’s home that was released Friday showed that FBI agents seized 11 sets of documents during the search with some type of confidential or secret marking on them, including some marked as “classified/ts/sci” — shorthand for “top secret/ sensitive compartmented information.” Information categorized that way is meant to be viewed only in a secure government facility.

The search encompassed not just the storage area where boxes of material known to the Justice Department were being held but also Trump’s office and residence. The search warrant and inventory unsealed Friday did not specify where in the Mar-a-lago complex the documents marked as classified were found.

Trump said Friday that he had declassified all the material in his possession while he was still in office. He did not provide any documentation that he had done so.

In an appearance on Fox News, 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 claiming that Trump had a “standing order” that documents taken out of the Oval Office and brought to the White House residence “were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.”

The search warrant said FBI agents were carrying out the search to look for evidence related to possible violations of the obstruction statute as well as the Espionage Act and a statute that bars the unlawful taking or destruction of government records or documents. No one has been charged in the case, and the search warrant on its own does not mean anyone will be.