Trump pushed the narrative that he and his lawyers were cooperating with Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations into documents from his time in the White House. That, he claims, means the Aug. 8 raid on his Florida estate was gratuitous. But the affidavit that convinced a judge to grant the search warrant tells a different story. Even in heavily redacted form, the affidavit points out that there was a protracted process that lasted about seven months into 2021 before Trump’s team coughed up any documents. It provides a far less friendly account than Team Trump has given of events in June of this year. The former president and his allies, for example, described a pleasant visit to Mar-a-Lago by a senior DOJ official, Jay Bratt, and three FBI agents on June 3. According to a Trump legal filing earlier this week, one of the FBI agents, having shown the warehouse where certain documents were kept, allegedly said: “Now it all makes sense.” The same Trump filing refers to a June 8 letter in which the Justice Department “requested, in part, that the warehouse be secured” — a request implied to have been granted when Trump told staff to put a second lock on the door. Instead, the Justice Department affidavit cites a letter on the same date — possibly the same letter — that reiterates to a Trump lawyer that there was no “secure location authorized to store classified information” anywhere at the resort. The letter makes clear that the Justice Department’s request was not some blanket security check, but a requirement to “maintain” the storage facility in its “current condition until further notice” — a phrase far more evocative of an investigation into a potential crime scene than a friendly chat about locks. The filing also includes as an exhibit a May 2022 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s national security division’s counterintelligence division. In the letter, Corcoran argues that presidents have “absolute authority to declassify documents” and that, in any case, no president can be prosecuted for “actions involving classified documents.” These claims are controversial and, again, take a different tone than what Trump and his allies have attempted to portray. Put it all together, and the effect on Trump’s preferred narrative about the investigation seems stark. “He blows it in the face,” Harry Littman said in this column. Littman, a former US attorney and deputy assistant attorney general, focused on the various delays on Trump’s part as the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and then the Justice Department searched for missing documents. The affidavit seeking the search warrant, Littman said, “comes at the end of a vexing, very protracted argument by them that would never be tolerated by any other citizen.” The argument that Trump may have simply declassified all relevant documents also drew the sharpest comments from President Biden, who has previously tried to distance himself from the investigation. “I have declassified everything in the world. I’m president, I can do everything!” Biden quipped to reporters at the White House on Friday shortly after the affidavit was released. “Come!” Meanwhile, a footnote in the affidavit made it clear that the classified status of the documents in question would have nothing to do with at least one of the possible crimes being investigated. Trump, characteristically, is pushing hard with his claims of political mistreatment for the raid. She argued in a post on Truth Social on Friday that the judge in the case, Bruce Rinehart, “should have NEVER allowed my home to be invaded.” He further claimed that Reinhart bore “enmity and hatred” towards him. But even while deploying his usual combative rhetoric, Trump insisted his side had “a close working relationship on the document turnover.” It is impossible to square that claim with the FBI’s assertion in the affidavit that investigators had “probable cause to believe evidence of obstruction would be found” in a Mar-a-Lago search. However, the bureau’s reasons for this claim remain mysterious, given the extensive redactions in the 32-page affidavit. In a related document also released Friday, the DOJ argued that the corrections were necessary because of the imperative to “protect the safety of numerous citizen witnesses” in the explosive case. The department further argued that “the government has reasonable concerns that steps may be taken to frustrate or otherwise interfere with this investigation if the facts in the affidavit are prematurely disclosed.” However, the information revealed brought a new level of analytical detail to the public domain. Specifically, he revealed that of the 15 boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago about a year after Trump left office, 14 contained information that had been classified. In all, the affidavit said, there were 184 such documents, 67 of which were designated secret, 92 classified and 25 top secret. These details alone trouble experts in the field. “While we do not know what this information refers to, by its very definition it could threaten the lives of individuals,” said Mark Zaid, a national security attorney. Zaid stressed that it is not yet clear that Trump himself is the target of the criminal investigation, only that investigators believe evidence of a crime can be found at Mar-a-Lago. Federal appeals court upholds Jim Crow-era Mississippi law restricting voting rights for felons Five facts from Mar-a-Lago probe affidavit Even so, he warned, “I believe, based on the affidavit, that the risk to one or more individuals continues to increase.” “I don’t know who one or more people are,” he added. “It could be the Mar-a-Lago staff, it could be the president, it could be his lawyers.” The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
