Court Unseals A More Detailed Inventory Of Items Retrieved At Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Estate — Update
02.09.2022 - 18:09
/ deadline.com
UPDATE, Friday AM: A more detailed inventory of what items the FBI retrieved in the search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was unsealed on Friday.
The list — read it here — includes a rundown of what was gathered from Trump’s office. That includes documents marked top secret, secret and confidential, but also 43 “empty folders with “classified” banners.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon ordered the unsealing of the document. She has yet to rule on Trump’s lawsuit to appoint a “special master” to comb through the records, as the former president argues that some of the items fell under executive privilege and attorney-client privilege.
PREVIOUSLY, Wednesday: The Justice Department said that documents were “likely concealed and removed” from a Mar-a-Lago storage room in an alleged effort to obstruct an investigation into former President Donald Trump’s cache of classified material at his property.
Federal prosecutors made the claim in a court filing late on Tuesday, as they oppose efforts to appoint a special master to review materials retrieved during a search of Trump’s estate on Aug. 8.
In the filing, the Justice Department said that they “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The DOJ’s filing outlines efforts over 18 months to obtain presidential records from Trump, taken to Mar-a-Lago when he left office. Under the Presidential Records Act, those records are the property of the U.S. government and held by the National Archives.
After Trump’s team initially turned over 15 boxes of materials to the archives, the agency alerted the FBI when it was discovered that documents with