Trump investigation: US court unseals list of seized Mar-a-Lago materialon September 2, 2022 at 3:21 pm

A US court has made public a detailed inventory of the material seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida home last month.

According to the filing, agents took 33 boxes of documents including dozens of empty folders marked classified.

It also reveals several documents marked secret and top secret were recovered from Mr Trump’s office.

Mr Trump, who is being investigated over his handling of classified records, denies wrongdoing.

Among the items recovered after the unprecedented 8 August search of Mar-a-Lago were:

Upon leaving office, US presidents must transfer all of their documents and emails to the National Archives. The justice department is looking into whether Mr Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate after he left office in January 2021.

Prosecutors allege Mr Trump and his lawyers failed to provide relevant documents voluntarily, and “likely concealed or removed” records as part of an effort to obstruct the investigation.

Mr Trump has rebuked these claims, arguing he had already declassified the documents in his possession.

The former president has also argued that files were kept securely in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago.

But the inventory unsealed on Friday shows that FBI agents retrieved about 1,500 documents, as well as classified folders that were empty, from Mr Trump’s office.

The court filing also confirms previous reports that many records were “intermixed” with personal effects, including clothes, books and newspapers.

The more detailed inventory of the classified material seized by the justice department in its Mar-a-Lago search doesn’t shed much light on what exactly was in the documents.

What it does reveal, however, is where they were located.

Of the 18 Top Secret documents listed, seven were in Donald Trump’s office, not in the estate’s storage area, as were 17 of the 54 Secret documents.

This suggests that these highly classified items were not just gathering dust in boxes in the bowels of Mar-a-Lago, they were at the former president’s fingertips – and that he may have had them accessible for a reason.

The government list does not go into further detail about where in the president’s office these documents were located, although in a court filing earlier this week the justice department said three classified items were found in his office’s desks.

Mr Trump has also publicly complained that the FBI accessed his safe, so that could be another possible location.

The inventory also shows that many classified documents, in the storage room and in Mr Trump’s office, were intermixed with photographs, newspaper clippings, “clothing/gift items” and empty folders – underlying the apparently haphazard method of boxing and removing material in the final days the Trump presidency.