Justice Dept. releases redacted affidavit for FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property
WASHINGTON — 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, 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...
Documents previously made public show that federal agents are investigating potential violations of three 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.
The affidavit argues a search of Mar-a-Lago was necessary due to the highly sensitive material found in the boxes recovered by the National Archives. Of 184 documents marked classified, 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.
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-Largo members, such as private guest suites.
Affidavits 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. It also does not include details about the interactions between Trump representatives and the Justice Department in the months leading up to the search, including a subpoena in May for records and a visit to the property in June by the department’s top counterintelligence official. The back-and-forth culminated in the Aug. 8 search in which agents retrieved the 11 sets of classified records.
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