A bombshell new report from top New York Times correspondent and so-called “Trump Whisperer” Maggie Haberman is now shedding even more new light on the former president’s most recent scandal — that landed him as the subject of an FBI search and seizure warrant raid at his Mar-a-Lago compound in recent weeks — revealing that the corrupt ex-president apparently took more than 300 documents that were clearly marked as classified material from the White House to his Palm Beach compound upon the end of his presidential term.
Haberman reports that the National Archives and Records Administration first discovered a total of approximately 150 documents that were determined to be sensitive, classified materials after working their way through the first batch of documents they took from Mar-a-Lago as a result of the first subpoena issued against the ex-president regarding the matter of the boxes of classified, top-secret, and federally protected documents and materials Donald Trump stole from the White House. The Times report says this original discovery helped “to explain the Justice Department’s urgent response.”
Trump has desperately attempted to claim that it’s frankly no big deal that he took the classified documents, because he “declassified” the materials during his final days in office, as the boxes of documents were being loaded up to his Palm Beach estate that he now calls home in his post-White House days. However, all the declassification in the world isn’t worth its weight in salt when it comes to laws and regulations surrounding federal property — which is precisely what was inside the boxes that were stolen by the 45th president.
Trump and his closest allies — namely former staffer to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) turned National Archives appointee for Trump, Kash Patel — continue to assert that in his capacity as the president, Donald Trump reserved the right and power to declassify anything he wanted to. That is also categorically false, as legal experts point to the Atomic Energy Act, which outlines the process required to declassify documents and materials, which clearly requires far more than Donald Trump simply saying so.
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Haberman reports, “In total, the government has recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mr. Trump since he left office, the people said: that first batch of documents returned in January, another set provided by Mr. Trump’s aides to the Justice Department in June and the material seized by the F.B.I. in the search this month.”
“And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both,” the report goes on to read.
Haberman also cites multiple inside sources who have been briefed and claimed that Donald Trump personally rifled through the boxes of documents in late 2021, before finally handing some of them over to the National Archives in January 2022, in connection to the subpoena. We have since learned, of course, that Donald Trump did not hand over even close to all of the documents and materials he was in possession of.
In early June of 2022, Trump’s aides handed over an additional few dozen sensitive documents during a visit that was paid by the Justice Department following an additional subpoena. Ultimately, the DOJ was left with no choice but to issue the search and seizure warrant against the ex-president’s golf club, as they had serious reason to believe that there were extensive documents still left at Mar-a-Lago that the ex-president and his people failed to turn over in accordance with the subpoenas, much of which was believed to be highly-sensitive, top-secret material.
A source revealed to Haberman that upon executing the search warrant, FBI agents discovered that there were documents still remaining at Mar-a-Lago not only in the previously cited storage area, but also in a container inside a closet in Donald Trump’s personal office.
“Some of the documents retrieved in January related to the NSA, the CIA, and the FBI, across a number of national security matters, a person familiar with what was taken said,” Haberman reports.
“Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran then drafted a statement, which [Christina] Bobb, who is said to be the custodian of the documents, signed,” the NYT report reads. “It asserted that, to the best of her knowledge, all classified material that was there had been returned, according to two people familiar with the statement.”
As a result of this, Bobb could personally soon find herself in a legally compromising position in connection to the sign-off.
Read the bombshell full report here.
Featured image via Flickr/Trump White House Archives
