FBI seized nearly 200,000 pages of Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Published Thu, Sep 29 2022 2:05 PM EDT
- FBI agents seized nearly 200,000 pages of documents from the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump, his lawyers revealed in a new court filing.
- It was previously known that FBI agents took about 11,000 documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach during an Aug. 8 raid in connection with a criminal investigation of his removal of government documents from the White House when he left office in early 2021.
- More than 100 of the documents were classified or highly classified.
Workers move boxes onto a truck on West Executive Avenue between the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021. Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | Getty Images
FBI agents seized nearly 200,000 pages of documents from the Florida residence of former President Donald Trump, his lawyers revealed in a new court filing.
It was previously known that FBI agents took about 11,000 documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach during an Aug. 8 raid in connection with a criminal investigation of his removal of government documents from the White House when he left office in early 2021. More than 100 of the documents were classified or highly classified.
Wednesday night's filing in Brooklyn federal court by Trump's lawyers was the first time that the huge number of pages that comprise those documents was disclosed.
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The filing says the Department of Justice is being "overly optimistic and aggressive" about meeting deadlines for the scanning of the seized documents by an outside data vendor and their subsequent review by a so-called special master in the case.
That special master, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, was appointed by another federal judge to review the seized files to determine which of them, if any, are protected by the attorney-client privilege or executive privilege and exempt from use in the criminal probe.
Trump's lawyers say that mid-October is a "realistic final production deadline," as opposed to the DOJ's position that a vendor could complete the scanning process by Oct. 7.
A man walks past boxes that were moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building, just outside the West Wing, inside the White House complex, Thursday, Jan. 14, 2021, in Washington. Gerald Herbert | AP
A federal appeals court last week allowed the DOJ to resume using the classified documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago in its probe.
The DOJ's investigation hinges on the fact that, by law, government records in the possession of a president must be given to the National Archives and Records Administration when they leave office.
The DOJ maintains that Trump does not have the right to invoke executive privilege over any of the government documents that were in his possession as he is no longer president.
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I wonder if they got his coloring books and sharpie in that haul.
Can't the FBI count?
It just amazes me that Trump even took these documents. To what end? Did he truly not know that he cannot do that under the PRA? Did he not realize that taking classified documents (especially TS/SCI) compromises national security?
This is so dumb and unnecessary ... I just cannot imagine what was going on in his mind.
So the search warrant was for classified documents and they found over 100 such documents that had classification markings of some level. Yet this article says they took over 200,000 documents. This doesn't strike anybody as overkill? It's this type of issue that has Trump supporters up in arms over a continued witch hunt for something to charge Trump with. And it was early on that the FBI stated that while they had all the documents they would be able to review them for referral to any other legal issue. So by their own words, the FBI was searching for anything that would help any other legal action against Trump under the guise of looking for classified documents.
I said all along that Trump should not have taken the classified documents, even if he has "declassified" them prior. But this just seems to be over-reach by the FBI to me.
what part of trump wasn't allowed to have any documents in his possession after he left the white house do you not understand?
What part of where I said that Trump should not have taken the classified documents even if he had "declassifed" them do you not understand? Or are you trying to state that he should not have been allowed to take ANY documents when he left the White House?
From what I gather, that is the way it is. They are not allowed to take anything.
Better tell all the past Presidents then as they all took papers and belongings to start their Presidential Library. The difference here is that for prior Presidents NARA had physical control of the papers and for Trump they did not. From earlier reporting they did review the storage at Mar-a-Lago and told them to put another lock on the door to the storage room. But all past Presidents have taken their personal papers when leaving the White House in order to set up their Presidential Library.
I'll agree that Trump should have put his papers into a NARA managed facility and that didn't happen. But that comes down to a storage issue, not a criminal one which is what is being pushed here.
no, I'm asking why that traitorous fat fuck isn't in jail awaiting his espionage trial...
Past presidents were never in control or had possession of documents. They were all held and taken care of by government entities.
Then why didn't you ask that in the first place instead of tossing out what you did? To answer that you'll need to ask the FBI. As I'm not the FBI I cannot answer that. But a suggestion, if you are going to ask that question of the FBI you may want to clearly ask a question rather than toss out a statement and hope they understand what you really want to ask. Saves time.
“I'll agree that Trump should have put his papers into a NARA managed facility and that didn't happen. But that comes down to a storage issue, not a criminal one which is what is being pushed here.”
Blurring the lines, sir. This goes much deeper than a ‘storage issue’. No one in the Federal government has carte blanche in determining what they consider ‘theirs’ once their service has been completed.
This may take years to resolve, but a resolution must be reached.
Didn't I say just that in sentence number 2 of the post you replied to?
Just ask just jim…
Ex Presidents have a lot more power than we like to admit. There's a lot of negotiation that goes on over the papers and what is released for Presidential Libraries. I'll agree that a resolution must be reached. The papers should have gone directly to a NARA facility when Trump left the White House and he should not have had classified documents, even ones that had been "declassified" as that still provides sources and means. But I suspect any resolution will be minor and not criminal.
You said all presidents take documents. Documents are kept at government run facilities.
Please re-read sentence number 2 from post 5.1.3. I'll even post it here to make it easier for you.
Now do you understand the sentence? I stated that for prior Presidents, NARA had physical control of the papers and in the case of Trump he just took them. Does this clear this up for you? Yes, all presidents take papers when they leave office. The difference stated once again is that for the prior presidents the papers went to NARA facilities and NARA had physical control of the papers and Trump just took them to Florida.
Yes it does. Thank you.
That is still not a past president taking documents.
They were never in physical possession of them.
“I'll agree that a resolution must be reached.”
Agreed.
So allow the powers at be to conduct a thorough investigation and let any indiscretions be properly addressed, lest this somehow become acceptable behavior.
And actually they are down the road, that is how Presidential Libraries get set up. The documents initially go into a NARA facility and are reviewed. There is some negotiation that happens between NARA and the Presidents staff on documents because there are always some documents that NARA doesn't want to release that the staff do want in the Library. Once the review is complete the released documents are given over to the President for his library. At that point the ex President is in possession of them in his Presidential Library. If an ex President could not take the documents then they would never be able to set up their Presidential Library.
What gets me is, what in the world would he want them for.
Yes, after the fact and after a process.
Then they are technically owned by the library I would think, not the ex president.
And I don't see the investigation being stopped or prevented here. I see the typical posturing by Trump and his team which is to be expected. And I see the addition of the Special Master to oversee as providing due process to Trump which IMO is the correct thing. It's going to take time and I have no doubt that someone will be disappointed at the end of it. I just don't plan on jumping up and down to say who will be in the disappointed group because I suspect there will be enough disappointment to go around for everybody.
Sometimes I think trump does things like this on purpose just to challenge norms.
(See what he can get away with.)
You are correct, an ex President does not own his Presidential Library. Technically it is owned by NARA. But you better believe that the ex President has say over what documents get to be part of the "public" record in the library. The ex President does claim some ownership however in that the library cannot be built using public finds, it must be privately financed thru a foundation headed by the ex President. This foundation can be run by staff, the ex President doesn't need to be involved in the day to day work but must be a figurehead as it's collecting funding for his library.
But it's human nature to want your time in office to be looked on in the best possible light so it makes sense that while there are documents that are released by NARA to the library some of those documents do not get released to public view.
Ego. His need to be the brightest light in the sky should explain this very easily. These are "beautiful" examples of just how "great" he is...
Oh, I bet we don't see 80% of it.
To be fair, we should not confuse “pages” with “documents.” For example, War and Peace is 1 document - of 1300 pages. With that in mind . . .
Let’s just call it 100. That amounts to 9/10ths of 1% of the documents seized. That doesn’t make it ok, but it also makes it seem not so bad, and possibly the kind of thing that could either be an honest mistake or an honest disagreement.
The cops love to seize everything they can get their hands on. Considering how long it will probably take to litigate all of this, Trump will probably be dead before he - or his heirs - ever see these documents again.
Sorry but there is no honest mistake on taking box after box.
In September of 2021 Trump told the writer Maggie Haberman that he had taken documents which were known to be classified ( the KimJong Un correspondence for example).
33 boxes of documents he wasn't supposed to have in the first place seems to stretch the "an honest mistake" claim a bit. if you or I were discovered in possession of 1 page of a classified document, we'd still be in jail awaiting trial.
Yeah, not saying it was right but we did hear stories about how frantic the packing of the Oval Office was. Had he not pushed his lie to stay in office and started the process to clean out and turn over in an orderly fashion like every president before him perhaps they would not have gotten classified documents mixed in with other documents. I don't know as I wasn't there, maybe they still would have. Maybe the taking of them was purposely done. But sometime in the future (not gonna attempt to say when as we both know this will drag on) this will be settled legally and if Trump is charged then he's charged and can deal with the consequences of his actions.
“Yeah, not saying it was right…”
Yeah, not saying it was right…no if’s, and’s or buts.
We’re so used to parsing words that at times those words become meaningless. Now we seem content in parsing numbers…how many documents vs. how many pages.
The bottom line, and something any reasonable person will acknowledge, he had no business doing what he did and he should and must be held accountable.
and there you go...
I have seen that a lot lately. People trying to redefine things.