In Florida, former President Donald J. A federal magistrate judge on Wednesday unsealed additional portions of the affidavit the FBI used last summer to obtain a warrant to search Trump’s private club and residence, Mar-a-Lago, for sensitive documents. New details about how that extraordinary process unfolded.
Newly unredacted sections of the affidavit show prosecutors based their search, in part, on surveillance footage from cameras near a storage room in Mar-a-Lago’s basement where Mr. Trump’s personal assistant, Walt Nauta, is said to be showing up. Mr. Boxes in and out of the room days before federal prosecutors arrive to collect sensitive records in Trump’s possession.
Published in Miami last month, Mr. Trump and Mr. Much of the content of the detailed indictment against Nauta, which was unsealed Wednesday, has already been made public. The indictment charged the former president with 31 counts of illegally possessing national security information and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve it.
The judge who ordered the unsealing, Bruce E. Reinhardt issued two earlier orders unsealing separate portions of the warrant affidavit in response to media requests.
The newly revealed information includes a photo of dozens of boxes in the Mar-a-Lago storage room and a detailed description of various angles captured by security cameras outside the room.
« The door to the storage room was painted gold and had no other markings on it, » wrote the FBI agent who drafted the affidavit. « The door to the storage room is located in the middle of the wall and can be reached by several wooden stairs. »
In an unredacted affidavit echoing the allegations, between May 24, 2022 and June 1, 2022, Mr. Nauta took 64 boxes out of a storage room at Mar-a-Lago, but only put 25 or 30 of them back.
« The current location of the boxes removed from the storage room, but not returned to, is unknown, » the affidavit said.
However, the newly released affidavit, Mr. Even after two previous attempts from Trump, federal prosecutors have not released all the reasons they believe Mar-a-Lago contained sensitive records.
In January 2022, Mr. Trump sent 15 boxes of government records from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives, which he found contained nearly 200 classified documents. This is Mr. That prompted federal prosecutors to issue a subpoena in May for additional materials with classified identities still in Trump’s possession. In June 2022, after an intensive search for Mar-a-Lago, one of the former president’s lawyers, M. Ivan Corcoran gave another set of 38 classified documents to the government.
But even after the documents of those two initial groups were withdrawn, Mr. Prosecutors suspected Trump had even more classified material in and around his Mar-a-Lago home. Mr. Nauta’s surveillance footage was the only source of evidence to confirm that belief. Mr. A lengthy section of the affidavit remains under seal after prosecutors said Trump did not return everything he was owed.
It was Judge Reinhart who issued the Mar-a-Lago search warrant last August.
Judge Reinhardt, Mr. Trump and Mr. A magistrate judge has also been appointed to try Nauda. Mr. Nauta is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in federal district court in Miami.
In response to the unsealing of new portions of the warrant, Mr. Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said the former president « continues to be in full compliance with the Presidential Records Act » and was helpful. to the Judiciary. Officials of the department have said that the facts contradict such claims.
In new details released on Wednesday, Mr. Corcoran or Mr. Another lawyer for Trump did not tell the lawyers. That omission contradicted earlier statements by lawyers to the government, saying that as president, Mr Trump has « absolute authority » to classify any material he wants.
The newly unredacted portions of the affidavit, Mr. Corcoran claims to have told the government he was told there were no classified records « in any private office space or other location at Mar-a-Lago » — a confirmation of the search. The property was found to be unreal.
In March, a federal judge in Washington ordered Mr. Persuaded Corcoran, working around the usual protections of attorney-client privilege, because Mr. Important records were kept at Mar-a-Lago.
