Multiple reports allege that late last month, lawyers hired by former President Donald Trump found at least two documents marked as classified while searching a storage facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., and handed those materials over to the FBI.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that the team who discovered the documents were hired by Trump’s representatives to ensure they had fully complied with a May grand jury subpoena that ordered the turnover of all materials with classified markings in all of the former president’s properties.
The documents were found in a storage unit that had been used to hold items from an office in Northern Virginia where Trump’s staffers had kept materials after he vacated the White House in January 2021.
The report said Trump staffers and a federal agency had shipped several pallets of boxes and assorted items, totaling in weight to approximately 3,000 pounds, from Northern Virginia to the unit in Florida in September 2021.
The FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on August 8, recovering over 100 documents bearing classification markings. Another 37 classified documents were uncovered during a search of Trump’s home in June, and 15 boxes containing 184 classified documents were taken by the National Archives and Records Administration in January.
The Justice Department claims that there are yet more sensitive materials to be discovered that Trump removed from the White House.
It is unclear what information the classified documents in the storage unit contained, but it also held boxes, gifts, clothing and other items.
“It was suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things,” a source told the Washington Post. “To my knowledge, he has never even been to that storage unit. I don’t think anyone in Trump world could tell you what’s in that storage unit.”
Other teams were hired by a federal judge to ensure the subpoena was carried out, and the teams searched Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, N.J., Trump Tower in Manhattan, and one other property. These searches were carried out around Thanksgiving, according to the New York Times.
Trump’s lawyers told the Justice Department that the search of the Bedminster resort and the Fifth Avenue skyscraper did not turn up any new classified documents.
“President Trump and his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal, and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump.
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