South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Trump lawyer: All material returned
Government told in June about classified items, 4 people say
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-a-Lago 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-aLago by Jay 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 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 search warrant used to carry out the daylong search of the former president’s home last Monday.
It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the DOJ 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 had 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 in that fashion 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-aLago complex the documents marked as classified were found.
Trump said Friday that he had declassified all the material in his possession while in office. He did not provide any documentation that he had done so.
Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich said Saturday that “just like every Democrat-fabricated witch hunt previously, the water of this unprecedented and unnecessary raid is being carried by a media willing to run with suggestive leaks, anonymous sources and no hard facts.”
The search warrant said FBI agents were carrying out the search to look for evidence related to possible violations of the Espionage Act and a statute that bars the unlawful taking or destruction of government records or documents, as well as of the obstruction law. No one has been charged in the case, and the search warrant on its own does not mean anyone will be.
Last year, officials with the National Archives discovered that Trump had taken a slew of documents and other government material with him when he left the White House in January 2021. That material was supposed to have been sent to the archives under the terms of the Presidential Records Act.
Trump returned 15 boxes of material in January of this year. Archivists found many pages of documents with classified markings and referred the matter to the DOJ.
In the spring, the Justice Department issued a subpoena to Trump seeking further documents believed to be in his possession. He was repeatedly urged by advisers to return what remained, despite what they described as his desire to continue to hold onto some documents.
Bratt and other officials visited Mar-a-Lago in early June, briefly meeting Trump. Two of Trump’s lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, spoke with Bratt and investigators he traveled with, people briefed on the meeting said.
Corcoran and Bobb showed Bratt and his team boxes holding material Trump had taken from the White House that were being kept in a storage area, the people said.
According to two people briefed on the visit, Bratt and his team left with additional material marked classified and around that time also obtained the written declaration from a Trump lawyer attesting all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over.
A short time after the meeting, according to people briefed on it, Bratt sent Corcoran an email telling him to get a more secure padlock for the room. Trump’s team complied.
The Justice Department also subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-aLago, including views outside the storage room. According to a person briefed on the matter, the footage prompted concern among investigators about the handling of the material. It is not clear when that footage was from.
Over recent months, investigators were in contact with roughly a half-dozen of Trump’s current aides who had knowledge of how the documents were handled, two people briefed on the approaches said. At least one witness provided investigators with information that led them to want to further press Trump for material, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.