'Incomprehensible': More classified docs were found at Mar-a-Lago, unsealed court filing reveals

Donald Trump had more classified documents at Mar-a-Lago that were not originally found when the FBI completed its execution of a search warrant, according to a recently unsealed 87-page court document in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of Donald Trump in the Espionage Act case. Trump faces 40 felony charges in the case, including 32 directly related to classified documents..

“No excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote, according to Forbes. Judge Howell “notes the government forced Trump’s attorneys to search Trump’s properties even after FBI investigators searched Mar-a-Lago in August 2022.”

Trump’s attorneys conducted searches of some of his other properties after the FBI “raid,” including his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump Tower in Manhattan, and other storage units and offices.

More classified documents were located at “an off-site office, a storage unit and at Mar-a-Lago, Howell wrote, noting Trump’s lawyers found a box with four documents that included classified materials in a Mar-a-Lago closet.”

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Politico added, “The FBI’s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago confirmed that dozens of other classified documents remained on the property — but as Howell notes, there were at least two more rounds of classified materials found on Trump’s property following additional searches.”

In a damning portion of the filing, Forbes also reports, Judge Howell “asserts Trump purposely obstructed the government’s investigation after it subpoenaed him to turn over all the remaining classified documents in his possession, saying the government ‘sufficiently demonstrated’ Trump violated the obstruction statute by showing he ‘intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents bearing classification markings’ from his attorneys.”

Professor of law, MSNBC/NBC News legal contributor, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance remarked, “This makes Judge Cannon’s foot dragging on this case even more incomprehensible. Not like it involves serious matters, or anything.”

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon has ground the trial to a halt, most recently putting an indefinite suspension in place.

ABC News adds that Special Counsel Jack Smith believed Trump “instructed aides to return several boxes they had previously removed from a storage room in the [Mar-a-Lago] club’s basement — without being caught on camera.”

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Judge Howell wrote that after Trump attorney Evan Corcoran “informed Trump of the subpoena for video footage on June 24, 2022, it set into motion a scramble by [co-defendant Walt] Nauta to change his travel plans and fly from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Palm Beach, Florida.”

“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before [redacted] search was captured on camera — and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off camera,” Judge Howell wrote. She added: “This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room, which necessarily occurred at some point between June 3, 2022 — when the room had approximately [redacted] boxes, according to FBI agents and [redacted] — and the execution of the search warrant on August 8, 2022 — when agents counted 73 boxes.”