Documents at Mar-a-Lago Were Moved and Hidden as U.S. Sought Them, Filing Suggests
By Glenn Thrush, Charlie Savage, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, NYTimes
The filing by the Justice Department paints the clearest picture to date of its efforts to retrieve documents from the former president’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday.
The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8.
Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks inside Mr. Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.
