Trump had 48,000 Mar-a-Lago guests near classified documents and only screened 6% of them

03 February 2024

In his most recent filing, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith included a particularly stunning detail alluding to the lackadaisical attitude former President Donald Trump had toward securing sensitive government secrets at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

According to Smith, Trump exhibited "unprecedented defiance" to the Archivist of the United States' efforts to collect and preserve documents from his administration, as federal law requires. In addition to allegedly keeping boxes of documents loose and out in the open, Smith also accused the former president of having tens of thousands of guests at Mar-a-Lago during the time documents were kept onsite, many of whom didn't even have their names logged.

Politico legal reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney noted that in the filing, Smith pointed to Secret Service records that found "of the approximately 48,000 guests who visited Mar-a-Lago between January 2021 and May 2022, while classified documents were at the property, only 2,200 had their names checked and only 2,900 passed through magnetometers." This means Trump's security staff only checked 4% of guests' names, and screened just 6% of visitors.

Smith submitted the filing on Friday to the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where he's charged the former president with several felonies for allegedly mishandling classified documents. The bulk of Smith's 67-page filing rebuts Trump attorneys' claims about the origins of the case, which, according to Smith, "falsely" accuse the DOJ of political bias and animosity toward the 45th president of the United States.

"iI is necessary to set the record straight on the underlying facts that led to this prosecution, because the defendants’ motion paints an inaccurate and distorted picture of events," Smith wrote.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon — who is is currently overseeing proceedings in the Mar-a-Lago case – met with Smith for roughly three hours on Wednesday in a closed-door meeting to discuss classified documents procedures. The Trump-appointed judge has been frequently criticized by legal experts for multiple pre-trial rulings that they say could result in the trial being pushed back until after the election. Cannon has yet to push back the scheduled May 20 trial date, but her previous rulings have almost certainly assured a delay given the preparation needed to comply with laws pertaining to classified information.

In addition to Trump, body man Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira have also been charged in the classified documents probe.

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