Former President Donald Trump is being investigated for a potential Espionage Act violation and possible obstruction of justice, according to the unsealed warrant for the unprecedented FBI raid of his Mar-a-Lago home.
The search warrant unsealed Friday afternoon cited 18 U.S. Code 793 (part of the Espionage Act) related to “gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information.”
Despite its name, many of the law’s provisions don’t relate specifically to espionage.
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The warrant also pointed to 18 U.S. Code 2071 on “concealment, removal, or mutilation generally” and 18 U.S. Code 1519 on “destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy.” The latter relates to potential obstruction of justice.
Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the warrant to be unsealed after the Justice Department told the court that Trump wasn’t objecting to it being made public.
The warrant described Mar-a-Lago as a mansion with approximately 58 bedrooms on a 17-acre estate. It said the locations to be searched were the “45 Office” along with “all storage rooms, and all other rooms or areas within the premises used or available to be used by FPOTUS [Former President of the United States] and his staff and in which boxes or documents could be stored.”
The property to be seized included all documents constituting “evidence” of violations of the listed criminal statutes, including “any physical documents with classification markings” along with any boxes containing that information and any other containers found or stored together with those records. The FBI was also looking for any information “regarding the retrieval, storage, or transmission of national defense information” or classified material, as well as “any government and/or Presidential Records” created from Trump’s first day in office through President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
The FBI said it also intended to seize “any evidence of the knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment” of any government or presidential records or of documents with classified markings.
The unsealed records also described the 46 items that the FBI said it had seized, accompanied by Trump lawyer Christina Bobb’s acknowledgment signature at 6:19 p.m. on Monday.
The items seized included 27 boxes, “various classified / TS [top secret] / SCI [sensitive compartmented information] documents,” four items the FBI described as “miscellaneous top secret documents,” three dubbed “miscellaneous secret documents,” two labeled “miscellaneous confidential documents,” and one “confidential document.”
Other records the FBI seized were the “Executive Grant of Clemency re: Roger Jason Stone Jr.,” “Info re: President of France,” two binders of photos, and a “handwritten note.”
Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: “The Biden administration is in obvious damage control after their botched raid where they seized the President’s picture books, a ‘hand written note,’ and declassified documents.” He called it “outrageous.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday that he “personally approved the decision to seek a search warrant in this matter.” He also announced that the Justice Department requested permission from the federal court to unseal the court-approved search warrant that authorized its raid.
“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” the DOJ said in its court filing.
The Monday search by the FBI was reportedly related to boxes of materials Trump brought back with him to his Florida resort after leaving office. The National Archives and Records Administration said some presidential records in 15 boxes obtained from Mar-a-Lago earlier this year included materials marked as classified.
GARLAND PERSONALLY APPROVED SEARCH WARRANT FOR MAR-A-LAGO
Earlier Friday, Trump rebutted reports indicating that the FBI obtained multiple sets of classified information from the Florida resort, saying that before he left his position, “it was all declassified.”
“Number one, it was all declassified. Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything,” Trump said on Truth Social, his social media website. “They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request.”
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was also investigated under 18 U.S.C. 793, whose statute cites “gross negligence.” Since-fired FBI Director James Comey said in July 2016 that “although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”
The DOJ requested Thursday to unseal the search warrant approved by Reinhart on Aug. 5, as well as two attachments included in the warrant. Authorities also requested a redacted property receipt listing items the FBI seized.
The DOJ highlighted in the filing that Trump, through his legal counsel, was allegedly provided a copy of those documents when it executed its search. Trump said he would not oppose the release of the warrant.
The Washington Post reported Thursday evening that “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought” in the Mar-a-Lago raid, according to “people familiar with the investigation.”
Trump denied that, saying that the “nuclear weapons issue is a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia was a hoax … the Mueller investigation was a hoax, and much more.”
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A host of congressional Republicans have condemned the raid and called on Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and the National Archives to provide answers.
Senior members of the Republican Party have also said they believe a double standard was on display with the DOJ’s handling of its investigation into Hunter Biden when compared to the Trump raid.
