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Trump had ‘no idea there were records in private office space’: New details on Mar-a-Lago raid emerge from FBI’s unedited affidavit
- New details of FBI affidavit were disclosed Tuesday by Florida magistrate
- It shows Trump’s writing was on returned classified documents
- And his lawyers didn’t say they were released when they returned them
- That was an important defense of Trump when it turned out that he was keeping classified documents
- It also revealed that his lawyer said he had been told that government files were not kept anywhere except in a secure storage area
- Yet several were found in a drawer in Trump’s office on August 8.
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A Florida magistrate on Tuesday released more details about the FBI’s affidavit setting out the case to search Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
In fact, court records show that on August 8, agents recovered three classified documents from a desk drawer in Trump’s office.
And it said some of the documents returned in June contained Trump’s handwritten notes — and that his attorney made no mention of any presidential attempt to release them.
The details will only raise more questions about why Trump kept the documents and whether he went to enough trouble to return them when asked.
Critics of the former president jumped on the new details to claim the misconduct went all the way to the top.
It came after federal prosecutors asked for more details of the affidavit not to be edited.
Magistrate Judge Aileen Cannon agreed, with an injunction signed Tuesday.
The FBI searched Trump’s Florida headquarters on August 8, setting off a political storm
Trump has repeatedly accused the Justice Department of conducting witch hunts against him, and his supporters have demanded that the FBI be shut down or abolished. But the final details on Tuesday will raise new questions about what he knew
More details of the FBI’s affidavit outlining the case against Trump were released Tuesday
It contained new details of what one of Trump’s lawyers (here referred to as a former president of the United States) said in June when he handed over a series of documents found in Mar-a-Lago.
“While receiving the production, FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 stated that he was told that all the records coming out of the White House were stored in one location in Mar-a-Lago, the STORAGE ROOM, and that the boxes of records were in the STORAGE ROOM” the remaining repository” of White House records,” said one of the newly unedited parts.
“FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 further stated that he was not informed that there were documents in a private office space or other location in Mar-a-Lago.”
The new rules also include annotations on some of the documents returned in June.
“Several documents also contain what appears to be FPOTUS’s handwritten notes,” it reads.
A court file contained this photo from the Mar-a-Lago FBI search. It led to accusations from Donald Trump that agents were trying to frame him for leaving documents on the ground – but former agents said it followed standard practice for documenting items seized during a search, and that a log would be added showing where they were found
Among them, 38 documents were marked as classified: five were ‘confidential’, 16 were marked ‘secret’ and 17 were ‘top secret’.
Some were marked ‘HCS’ for Human Intelligence Control System, which could potentially identify informants.
“In preparing the documents, neither FPOTUS COUNCIL 1 nor INDIVIDUAL 2 claimed that FPOTUS released the documents,” the new section reads.
Trump publicly claimed that he had released all documents taken home — a defense that was treated skeptically by national security attorneys.
The new rules also reveal that investigators sought surveillance footage of Trump’s estate dating all the way back to January.
“All surveillance records, videos, images, photos and/or CCTV from internal cameras located on the ground floor (basement) – on the property of Mar-a-Lago … from the period of January 10, 2022 to the present,” it says.