A Trump lawyer reportedly told officials there was no classified material at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, saying there were only 12 boxes of “news clippings” stashed at the former president’s Florida home before the government began making trips to the resort.
Trump lawyer Pat Philbin made the claim to National Archives lawyer Gary Stern in a September 2021 call, relaying information he claimed to have received from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, the Washington Post reported, citing sources aware of the call.
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In May 2021, months after Trump departed the White House, the National Archives reached out to Trump’s team in pursuit of documents believed to be missing from the agency’s collection of Trump records. Both sides continued discussions on and off in the months that followed.
Philbin relayed to Stern in the September call that Meadows assured him no documents had been destroyed, according to the report. Stern was convinced that there were upward of two dozen boxes of materials Trump possessed, an email exchange revealed.
Eventually, the correspondence between the two sides led to the agency collecting 15 boxes of material from Mar-a-Lago in mid-January. Officials discovered material with classified markings in the stash and referred the matter to the Department of Justice, which set off a chain of events that culminated in the Aug. 8 FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
During the January exchange, a DOJ follow-up in June, and the August raid, the government seized hundreds of documents with classified markings, including material that ranged from “CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET information,” according to court documents.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and insisted he declassified the documents confiscated. He has lampooned the government’s investigation into his handling of classified material as an “unAmerican break-in” and a “witch hunt.”
Attorneys for Trump have not asserted in court that the Mar-a-Lago stash had been declassified. Federal investigators noted in an affidavit for the search that neither Trump nor his counsel told them that the documents they sought were declassified.
His legal team has contended that privileged material was retrieved in the August search and seizure and won a court-approved special master to comb through the trove. The DOJ has conceded in court that its in-house “Privilege Review Team” has identified a “limited set” of content that may have been subject to attorney-client and other forms of privileges. They also returned his passports.
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A federal judge recently rejected a DOJ request for a partial stay on a court order blocking further review of the retrieved material until the special master examines it. The DOJ is also appealing the appointment of a special master.
The DOJ is investigating possible violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice during its review of the classified documents holed up in Trump’s Palm Beach resort, per an unsealed warrant for the August raid. Trump is confident he won’t get indicted.
Revelations about the call with Stern reveal that Meadows was more involved with the document debacle than previously known. Meadows complied with a DOJ subpoena related to its Jan. 6 Capitol riot inquiry, according to a recent report.
