![]() The affidavit includes a May 25 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran to Jay Bratt, chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in the Justice Department's National Security Division. The affidavit notes that HCS and SI fall under the heading of "sensitive compartmented information" (SCI), which refers to "classified information concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes" that "is required to be handled within formal access control systems." Some of the documents had markings requiring special handling: HCS (HUMINT Control System), FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), ORCON (Originator Control), NOFORN (Not Releasable to Foreign Nationals), and SI (Special Intelligence). They found "184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET." NARA reported that the boxes contained "newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and 'a lot of classified records.'" It said "highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly identified."įrom May 16 to May 18, "FBI agents conducted a preliminary review" of the 15 boxes. On February 9, after NARA discovered that the boxes contained classified documents, it referred the matter to the Justice Department. ![]() It "continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021," when "NARA was informed twelve boxes were found and ready for retrieval." Trump's representatives ultimately turned over 15 boxes in January, a year after President Joe Biden's inauguration. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the search warrant-also clarifies Trump's defense against possible criminal charges stemming from his retention of those documents.Īccording to the affidavit, which the Justice Department published today, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) first requested the return of missing presidential records on May 6, 2021, three and a half months after Trump left office. But the document does shed some light on the circumstances that led to the August 8 search, during which the FBI seized 11 sets of documents marked as classified, along with unclassified presidential records that belonged in the National Archives. Because the public version of the Mar-a-Lago search warrant affidavit is heavily redacted, it does not resolve lingering questions about the FBI's justification for searching former President Donald Trump's residence at his Palm Beach resort. ![]()
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