Prior to the raid at Mar-a-Lago this week, federal investigators had reportedly seized another batch of documents from former President Donald Trump’s Florida resort in June.
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Back in early June, federal investigators served a subpoena from a federal grand jury and collected documents believed to contain sensitive national security information stashed in the basement of the resort, CNN reported.
DOJ ORDERED TO RESPOND AFTER REQUESTS TO UNSEAL FBI’S TRUMP RAID WARRANT
“Pretty clear what happened here: DOJ tried to gain possession of classified documents by subpoena and then got intel that Trump did not produce everything required. So SW was needed,” Andrew Weissmann, a former Mueller prosecutor, tweeted in response to the report.
Trump reportedly attended the start of the June meeting between his lawyers and federal investigators regarding the documents. He then allowed his attorneys to engage with investigators and show them the material in question. Investigators then seized a small number of documents, some of which were marked top secret or higher, according to the report.
After the early June meeting, investigators also issued a subpoena for surveillance footage at the resort to determine who had access to locations where the documents had been stashed, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Trump Organization, which oversees the resort in Palm Beach, Florida, received the subpoena on June 22 and turned over the footage, according to the outlet.
The June seizure was also reported by the New York Times and Just the News. It came months after the National Archives and Records Administration collected about 15 boxes worth of material from Mar-a-Lago in January. Officials at the National Archives found classified material in the trove and referred the matter to the Justice Department, which opened an inquiry in response.
Following the events in June, investigators were apparently unconvinced that they had retrieved all of the classified material at Mar-a-Lago. A confidential source indicated to authorities that additional material remained at the resort, which ultimately prompted the raid, two officials told Newsweek.
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Dozens of FBI agents reportedly dressed in plain clothes converged upon Mar-a-Lago on Monday to carry out a search warrant. The search was related to the Justice Department’s review of how the former president handled classified information, his son Eric Trump told Fox News.
Trump disparaged the raid as a “surprise attack” and “POLITICS,” noting, “All the while our Country is going to HELL!”, in a post to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday.
