Trump adviser scanned and saved contents of box that had classified docs: report

21 May 2024

An unnamed witness, reportedly an adviser to Donald Trump, scanned the contents of a box that had contained classified documents, and saved those digital files to her laptop, which belongs to a political action committee which pays Donald Trump’s legal expenses.

The stunning revelation was tucked away in the footnote of an 87-page court document unsealed by U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell on Tuesday, in response to a separate filing in which Trump’s attorneys are claiming prosecutorial misconduct, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney who reported the details.

The filing revealed that at least four more classified documents had been found at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and resort, in his bedroom, even after FBI agents executed and completed a search warrant months earlier, in August of 2022.

Judge Howell, Politico reports, “noted that [a] Trump adviser connected to his Save America PAC had acknowledged scanning the contents of the box that contained the classified materials in 2021 and storing them on a personal laptop provided by the PAC.”

In the footnote Judge Howell writes, “on January 6, 2023, the former president’s counsel informed the government that, in 2021, WITNESS scanned the contents of the box—produced on January 5, 2023, and previously containing classified documents—onto a laptop in her possession owned by the Save America Political Action Committee (‘PAC’), a PAC formed by the former president in 2020. … The former president’s counsel saved those scans onto a thumb drive and provided the thumb drive to the government that day.”

Axios adds: “A witness scanned the contents of the box containing the classified materials and stored them on a laptop in her possession owned by Trump’s Save America PAC, according to a footnote in the opinion.”

The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell, pointing to the Politico report, adds: “This was the incident where Trump aide Chamberlain Harris — known as ROTUS, short for Receptionist of the United States — scanned and uploaded classified docs onto her laptop … Guardian reported this contemporaneously last year, as did CNN.”

Lowell also pointed to The Guardian’s report.

The Save America PAC according to Open Secrets, raised well over $108 million in the 2021-2022 cycle, and spent over $121 million. In the 2023-2024 cycle, the PAC has raised over $76 million, and spent well over $85 million.

“Since leaving office, former president Trump has been involved in an array of criminal and civil litigation — some that relates to his campaigns and presidency and some that does not. To cover the enormous legal bills, estimated at more than $100 million, he has turned to his political action committees (PACs), essentially having campaign donors pay costs for which he would otherwise be on the hook personally,” the Brennan Center for Justice reported earlier this month.

“Following his 2020 election loss, Trump received more than $250 million in donations from supporters to fuel an ‘election defense fund.’ He divided that money between two campaign entities: his 2020 presidential campaign committee, which he subsequently converted into a freestanding PAC called Make America Great Again (MAGA) PAC, and a second entity called Save America PAC, which is a so-called ‘leadership PAC‘ (a type of PAC that a federal candidate can establish for the ostensible purpose of supporting other candidates).”

National security attorney Brad Moss on Tuesday, commenting on Politico’s report of the additional classified documents at Mar-a-Lago wrote: “Reminder that the MAL docs case was and will always have been the cleanest, most straightforward criminal prosecution of the four against the former president. That the public won’t see it brought to fruition before they go to the voting booth is a stain on the judicial system.”

This article has been updated with the details from The Guardian’s Lowell.

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