WASHINGTON (AP) — Fourteen of the 15 boxes recovered from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate early this year contained classified documents, many of them top secret, mixed in with miscellaneous newspapers, magazines and personal correspondence, according to an FBI affidavit released Friday.
No space at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was authorized for the storage of classified material, according to the court papers, which laid out the FBI’s rationale for searching the property this month, including “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found.”
The 32-page affidavit — heavily redacted to protect the safety of witnesses and law enforcement officials and “the integrity of the ongoing investigation” — offers the most detailed description to date of the government records being stored at Mar-a-Lago long after Trump left the White House. It also reveals the gravity of the government’s concerns that the documents were there illegally.
The document makes clear how the haphazard retention of top secret government records, and the apparent failure to safeguard them despite months of entreaties from U.S. officials, has exposed Trump to fresh legal peril just as he lays the groundwork for another potential presidential run in 2024.
“The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records,” an FBI agent wrote on the first page of the affidavit.
Documents previously made public show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of multiple federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
Trump has long insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that he fully cooperated with government officials. And he has rallied Republicans behind him by painting the search as a politically motivated witch hunt intended to damage his reelection prospects. He repeated that refrain on his social media site Friday, saying he and his representatives had had a close working relationship with the FBI and “GAVE THEM MUCH.”
His attorneys late Friday repeated their request for the appointment of an independent special master to review the documents taken from the home, saying the redacted affidavit doesn’t give Trump sufficient information about why the search took place or what materials were removed.
The affidavit does not provide new details about 11 sets of classified records recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago but instead concerns a separate batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from the home in January. The Archives sent the matter to the Justice Department, indicating in its referral that a review showed “a lot” of classified materials, the affidavit says.
The affidavit made the case to a judge that a search of Mar-a-Lago was necessary due to the highly sensitive material found in those 15 boxes. Of 184 documents with classification markings, 25 were at the top secret level, the affidavit says. Some had special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a special intelligence court.
And some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, including newspapers, magazines and miscellaneous print-outs, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives.
Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer and author of “The Recruiter,” said this showed Trump’s lack of respect for controls. “One of the rules of classified is you don’t mix classified and unclassified so there’s no mistakes or accidents,” he said.
The affidavit shows how agents were authorized to search a large swath of Mar-a-Lago, including Trump’s official post-presidential “45 Office,” storage rooms and all other areas in which boxes or documents could be stored. They did not propose searching areas of the property used or rented by Mar-a-Lago members, such as private guest suites.
The FBI submitted the affidavit, or sworn statement, to a judge so it could obtain the warrant to search Trump’s property. Affidavits typically contain vital information about an investigation, with agents spelling out the justification for why they want to search a particular location and why they believe they’re likely to find evidence of a potential crime there.
The documents routinely remain sealed during pending investigations. But in an acknowledgment of the extraordinary public interest in the investigation, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ordered the department by Friday to make public a redacted version of the affidavit.
In a separate document unsealed Friday, Justice Department officials said it was necessary to redact some information to “protect the safety and privacy of a significant number of civilian witnesses, in addition to law enforcement personnel, as well as to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation.”
The second half of the affidavit is almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to discern the scope of the investigation or where it might be headed. It does not reveal which individuals might be under investigation and it does not resolve core questions, such as why top secret documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago after the president’s term ended even though classified information requires special storage.
Trump’s Republican allies in Congress were largely silent Friday as the affidavit emerged, another sign of the GOP’s reluctance to publicly part ways with the former president, whose grip on the party remains strong during the midterm election season. Both parties have demanded more information about the search, with lawmakers seeking briefings from the Justice Department and FBI once Congress returns from summer recess.
Though Trump’s spokesman derided the investigation as “all politics,” the affidavit makes clear the FBI search was hardly the first time federal law enforcement had expressed concerns about the records. The Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, for instance, visited Mar-a-Lago last spring to assess how the documents were being stored.
The affidavit includes excerpts from a June 8 letter in which a Justice Department official reminded a Trump lawyer that Mar-a-Lago did not include a secure location authorized to hold classified records. The official requested that the room at the estate where the documents had been stored be secured, and that the boxes that were moved from the White House to Mar-a-Lago “be preserved in that room in their current condition until further notice.”
The back-and-forth culminated in the Aug. 8 search in which agents retrieved 11 sets of classified records.
The document unsealed Friday also offer insight into arguments the Trump legal team is expected to make. It includes a letter from Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran in which he asserts that a president has “absolute authority” to declassify documents and that “presidential actions involving classified documents are not subject to criminal sanction.”
Mark Zaid, a longtime national security lawyer who has criticized Trump for his handling of classified information, said the letter was “blatantly wrong” to assert Trump could declassify “anything and everything.”
“There are some legal, technical defenses as to certain provisions of the espionage act whether it would apply to the president,” Zaid said. “But some of those provisions make no distinction that would raise a defense.”
In addition, the affidavit includes a footnote from the FBI agent who wrote it observing that one of the laws that may have been violated doesn’t even use the term “classified information” but instead criminalizes the unlawful retention of national defense information.
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Associated Press writers Jill Colvin in New York and Nomaan Merchant, Michael Balsamo and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP
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Find more on Donald Trump-related investigations: https://apnews.com/hub/donald-trump
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An earlier version of this story said the affidavit was 38 pages. The document released Friday included a 32-page affidavit and six pages of supplemental material.
Takeaways from the unsealed Mar-a-Lago search affidavit
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Friday unsealed the FBI affidavit justifying the unprecedented search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. While the document released is highly redacted, with many of its pages crossed out by black blocks, it includes new details about the sheer volume of sensitive and highly classified information that was stored at the former president’s Florida beachfront home, underscoring the government’s concerns about its safety.
Here are top takeaways of what the document revealed:
TRUMP HAD ‘A LOT’ OF CLASSIFIED MATERIAL STORED AT HIS CLUB
While the affidavit doesn’t provide new details about the 11 sets of classified records that were recovered during the FBI’s Aug. 8 search of Trump’s winter home, it does help to explain why the Justice Department believed that retrieving the outstanding documents was necessary.
Federal investigators knew months before the search that Trump had been storing top secret government records at Mar-a-Lago, a private club accessible not only to Trump, his staff and his family, but paying members and their guests, along with a revolving door of attendees at various functions, including weddings, political fundraisers and charity galas.
The affidavit notes that Mar-a-Lago storage areas, Trump’s office, his residential suite and other areas at the club where documents were suspected to still be kept were not authorized locations for the storage of classified information. Indeed, it notes that no space at Mar-a-Lago had been authorized for the storage of classified information at least since the end of Trump’s term in office.
Yet the affidavit reveals that, of the batch of 15 boxes that the National Archives and Records Administration retrieved from Trump’s home in January, 14 contained documents with classification markings. Inside, they found 184 documents bearing classification markings, including 67 marked confidential, 92 secret and 25 top secret.
The Archives referred the matter to the Justice Department on Feb. 9 after a preliminary review of the boxes found what they described as “a lot of classified records.”
THE RECORDS INCLUDED TOP INTELLIGENCE SECRETS
Agents who inspected the boxes found special markings suggesting they included information from highly sensitive human sources or the collection of electronic “signals” authorized by a court under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The affidavit lists several markings, including ORCON, or “Originator Controlled.” That means officials at the intelligence agency responsible for the report did not want it distributed to other agencies without their permission.
There may also be other types of records with classified names or codewords still redacted.
“When things are at that level of classification, it’s because there’s a real danger to the people who are collecting the information or the capability,” said Douglas London, a former senior CIA officer who wrote a book about the agency, “The Recruiter.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has not responded to calls from Congress for a damage assessment. Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a statement in which he once again called for a briefing.
“It appears, based on the affidavit unsealed this morning, that among the improperly handled documents at Mar-a-Lago were some of our most sensitive intelligence,” Warner said.
CLASSIFIED RECORDS WERE MIXED WITH OTHER PAPERS
Some of those classified records were mixed with other documents, the affidavit says, citing a letter from the Archives.
According to Archives’ White House liaison division director, the boxes contained “newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and ‘a lot of classified records.’” Several contained what appeared to be Trump’s handwritten notes.
Of most significant concern: “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly (sic) identified.”
A president might be given raw intelligence reporting to supplement his briefings or to cover a breaking or critically important matter, said David Priess, a former CIA officer and White House briefer who wrote “The President’s Book of Secrets,” a history of the President’s Daily Brief.
But it would be “unusual, if not unprecedented, for a president to keep it and to intermingle it with other papers,” he said.
“Even though I was prepared for this because I knew the judge would not approve a search based on something minor, the breadth and depth of the careless handling of classified information is truly shocking,” Priess said.
TRUMP HAD REPEATED OPPORTUNITIES TO RETURN THE DOCUMENTS
The affidavit makes clear yet again that Trump had numerous opportunities to return the documents to the government, but simply chose not to.
A lengthy process to retrieve the documents had been underway essentially since Trump left the White House. The document states that on or about May 6, 2021, the Archives made a request for the missing records “and continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021,” when it was informed 12 boxes were found and ready for retrieval from the club.
The affidavit makes clear that the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation concerns not just the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces and the potentially unlawful concealment or removal of government records, but says investigators had “probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction” would be found in their search.
Trump’s lawyer, in a letter that was included in the release, had argued to DOJ that presidents have “absolute” authority to declassify documents, claiming that his “constitutionally-based authority regarding the classification and declassification of documents is unfettered.” Trump has not provided evidence the documents at Mar-a-Lago were declassified before he left Washington.
TRUMP SAYS HE DID ‘NOTHING WRONG’
Trump has long insisted, despite clear evidence to the contrary, that he fully cooperated with government officials and had every right to have the documents on site. On his social media site, he responded to the unsealing by continuing to vilify law enforcement.
He called it a “total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ” and said “WE GAVE THEM MUCH.” In another post, he offered just two words: “WITCH HUNT!!!”
In an interview on Lou Dobbs’ “The Great America Show” on Thursday, he said he’d done nothing wrong.
“This is a political attack on our country and it’s a disgrace,” he added. “It’s a disgrace.”
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Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Mike Balsamo, Lisa Mascaro and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.