FBI’s Mar-a-Lago search followed months of resistance, delay by Trump
By Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig, Jacqueline Alemany and Rosalind S. Helderman
August 23, 2022
Donald Trump’s lawyers received ominous news in an April 12 email from the National Archives: The FBI would soon examine sensitive documents the former president had reluctantly returned to the government from his Florida club three months earlier.
The communication, which has been reviewed by The Washington Post, was a crucial pivot point in the probe of Trump’s handling of classified documents that led to the dramatic search of his Mar-a-Lago Club earlier this month.
Within weeks, Trump would have new lawyers to deal with the documents, and the FBI’s attention would shift from top-secret material Trump returned to the Archives to classified items they believed he had kept in Florida. One lawyer who received the email, former White House deputy counsel Pat Philbin, would be interviewed by FBI agents who considered him a witness in the rapidly expanding investigation.
Some of Trump’s allies have blamed the rushed and haphazard packing process during Trump’s final days in office for the presence of documents the FBI found in Trump’s bedroom, office and a first-floor storage room at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8. But the key events that led to the FBI search took place only this year, after months of slow-rolling conflict between the former president and law enforcement agencies.
Some material recovered in the search is considered extraordinarily sensitive, two people familiar with the search said, because it could reveal carefully guarded secrets about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods. One of them said the information is “among the most sensitive secrets we hold.”
This account of Trump’s effort to keep the FBI from reviewing the classified material is drawn from newly released correspondence and court filings, as well the recollections of multiple people with direct knowledge of the investigation or who were briefed on events. Many of them spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the ongoing criminal probe.
In a legal filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers insisted that he had been cooperating with Justice Department requests. In fact, however, the narrative they laid out, as well as other documents and interviews, show that Trump ignored multiple opportunities to quietly resolve the FBI concerns by handing over all classified material in his possession — including a grand jury subpoena that Trump’s team accepted May 11. Again and again, he reacted with a familiar mix of obstinance and outrage, causing some in his orbit to fear he was essentially daring the FBI to come after him.
In a May 10 letter to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran that was released Tuesday, acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall outlined weeks of resistance that followed the April 12 email. Trump tried to delay and thwart the FBI’s review of the records he had turned over to the Archives in January, Steidel Wall wrote, despite a finding by the Justice Department that the records included 100 classified documents comprising 700 pages of material, some of it extraordinarily sensitive information related to secret operations and programs with very limited access, on a need-to-know basis.
In a legal filing on Monday, Trump’s lawyers insisted that he had been cooperating with Justice Department requests. In fact, however, the narrative they laid out, as well as other documents and interviews, show that Trump ignored multiple opportunities to quietly resolve the FBI concerns by handing over all classified material in his possession — including a grand jury subpoena that Trump’s team accepted May 11. Again and again, he reacted with a familiar mix of obstinance and outrage, causing some in his orbit to fear he was essentially daring the FBI to come after him.
In a May 10 letter to Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran that was released Tuesday, acting archivist Debra Steidel Wall outlined weeks of resistance that followed the April 12 email. Trump tried to delay and thwart the FBI’s review of the records he had turned over to the Archives in January, Steidel Wall wrote, despite a finding by the Justice Department that the records included 100 classified documents comprising 700 pages of material, some of it extraordinarily sensitive information related to secret operations and programs with very limited access, on a need-to-know basis.
The May 10 letter said government lawyers had concluded that executive privilege is held by the current president, not a former one, and that President Biden had delegated to Steidel Wall the decision as to whether the FBI should be allowed to view the records. “I have therefore decided not to honor the former President’s ‘protective’ claim of privilege,” she wrote, indicating she would allow the FBI to begin viewing the records in two days. Before it was released publicly, the letter was published by John Solomon, a Trump ally who runs a news website.
In Trump’s inner circle, concern has been rising since June that the former president has created legal jeopardy for himself, according to multiple people in his orbit. “Mar-a-Lago is a big problem,” one of the people said.
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich did not respond to specific questions for this article. In an email, he said Trump “will defeat this massive abuse of government just like every one before by exposing the lies and championing the truth.”
Protecting presidential records
Under the Presidential Records Act, a 1970s-era statute passed in the wake of the abuses of Richard M. Nixon’s White House, documents prepared for the president are considered public property, overseen by the National Archives after a president leaves office.
After Trump’s term ended in January 2021, Archives officials identified various high-profile items that had not been sent to their collection and requested they be located and turned over. What followed was a tortured standoff among Trump; some of his own advisers, who urged the return of documents; and the bureaucrats charged by the law with maintaining and protecting presidential records. Trump only agreed to return some of the documents after a National Archives official asked a Trump adviser for help, saying they may have to soon refer the matter to Congress or the Justice Department.
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