Former President Donald Trump retained over 100 documents with over 700 pages worth of classified material after his White House departure, according to the National Archives and Records Administration.
The 700 pages of classified documents were situated in the 15 boxes the National Archives collected from Trump’s extravagant Mar-a-Lago resort in January, acting U.S. Archivist Debra Steidel Wall told Trump lawyer M. Evan Corcoran in a letter.
300-PLUS CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS FOUND AT TRUMP’S MAR-A-LAGO: REPORT
“According to NARA, among the materials in the boxes are over 100 documents with classification markings, comprising more than 700 pages,” the letter said. “Some include the highest levels of classification, including Special Access Program (SAP) materials.”
Wall’s letter came in response to a request from Trump lawyers to delay the disclosure of material seized by the FBI. She informed Corcoran that the agency would not honor Trump’s claims of privilege over the documents and would not further delay “the FBI and others in the Intelligence Community” in their reviews of the seized material.
Wall explained that she was informed by legal counsel to President Joe Biden that the White House had deferred the matter of whether the documents were protected by privilege claims to her. The letter, dated May 10, was revealed by journalist John Solomon on Monday before being released by the National Archives on Tuesday.
A report from the New York Times indicated that over 150 documents with classified markings had been retrieved in the January seizure and more than 300 such documents had been collected from Mar-a-Lago since Trump left office.
The National Archives’s January collection ignited a Justice Department inquiry into Trump’s handling of presidential documents after officials discovered classified material among the trove of documents seized.
After the January encounter, DOJ officials seized another batch of documents with sensitive national security information stashed in the basement of Mar-a-Lago. About two months later, FBI agents searched the resort in the August raid and reportedly recovered 26 boxes of material.
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Trump may have violated the Espionage Act and obstructed justice, per a warrant for the search unsealed Friday. The DOJ has been fighting the release of the full affidavit for the raid, but a judge ordered the department to present a redacted version and a few other documents to the court by Thursday.
The former president has blasted the raid as an “unAmerican break-in,” among other aspersions, and has filed a suit aimed at preventing the DOJ from examining the evidence retrieved during the August raid. He denies any wrongdoing.
