Report: Classified items found at Trump storage unit in Fla.
Dec 6, 2022, 9:32 PM | Updated: Dec 7, 2022, 11:02 pm
FILE - Former President Donald Trump announces a third run for president as he speaks at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Nov. 15, 2022. As a businessman and president, Trump faced a litany of lawsuits and criminal investigations yet emerged from the legal scrutiny time and again with his public and political standing largely intact. But he’s perhaps never confronted a probe as perilous as the Mar-a-Lago investigation, an inquiry focused on the potential mishandling of top-secret documents. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
(AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — At least two items marked as classified were found in a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Florida, after lawyers for former President Donald Trump arranged for a firm to search for additional classified material, according to a published report Wednesday. The items were provided to the FBI.
The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that the items were discovered by an outside team brought in by Trump’s representatives to search his other properties after the FBI recovered roughly 100 documents marked classified during an Aug. 8 search of his Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago.
The nature of the newly found material was not immediately clear, but the storage unit in which they were found had been used to hold items from an office in northern Virginia used by Trump staffers after he left office, the newspaper said.
The 100 or so documents the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago in August were on top of 37 bearing classification markings that Trump lawyers retrieved from the home during a June visit. In addition, 15 boxes containing about 184 classified documents were recovered in January by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The possibility that the Justice Department had not yet recovered all classified materials has existed for months.
The FBI’s August search of the home came after investigators developed evidence indicating that additional sensitive documents remained there, even though Trump representatives had certified that all classified documents requested in a Justice Department subpoena had been located and returned.
After a federal judge pressured the Trump team to demonstrate its full compliance with the subpoena, the newspaper said, it brought in an outside firm to search properties including Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, as well as Trump Tower in New York City.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment.
A spokesman for Trump, responding to reports about an outside firm’s search for classified materials, said in a statement, “President Trump and his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal, and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice.”
Spokesman Steven Cheung did not respond to a follow-up phone call about subsequent reporting indicating that a search of the storage unit had turned up at least two items with classification markings.
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