Mar-a-Lago inventory shows top secret docs, news clippings, books — and empty ‘classified’ folders
An inventory from last month’s FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home indicates that agents unearthed 18 top secret documents, 31 documents carrying confidential classification markings and 48 empty folders marked as “classified,” according to court documents unsealed Friday.
The stash of secret papers was mixed in with books, unclassified government documents and hundreds of news clippings, according to the eight-page inventory, which surfaced as part of legal disputes surrounding the materials taken from Trump’s Palm Beach, Fla., estate on Aug. 8.
A page from a FBI property list of items seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and made public by the Department of Justice, are photographed Friday, Sept. 2, 2022. (Jon Elswick/)
Trump’s legal team has requested that an independent arbiter review the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago. The Justice Department is probing Trump’s handling of government documents.
A filing from the Justice Department that accompanied the inventory said the review of the documents was “not a single investigative step but an ongoing process in this active criminal investigation.” The filing said the government has examined every item that it seized.
“The seized materials will continue to be used to further the government’s investigation, and the investigative team will continue to use and evaluate the seized materials as it takes further investigative steps,” said the filing.
It was not immediately clear if the empty folders with “classified” markings indicated that some materials sought by the federal government remained beyond its grasp.
Norman Eisen, a Brookings Institution fellow who worked as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, said the inventory “poses the obvious but profoundly concerning question: Where did those documents go?”
“We don’t have good answers,” Eisen said Friday afternoon. “It’s not just the documents that were found — it’s the documents that may be missing that create the national security crisis.”
FILE - Former President Donald Trump speaks from the podium during a campaign rally, on May 1, 2022, in Greenwood, Neb. (Kenneth Ferriera/)
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the inventory, nor did lawyers for Trump.
The inventory, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, seemed to illuminate the apparently messy manner in which Trump stored papers on his Florida estate after leaving the White House in 2021.
Some have wondered if the ex-president took files holding government secrets as keepsakes. But many details about the search — and Trump’s handling of the documents — remain foggy.
Trump did not immediately respond to the release of the new inventory on his Truth Social account, which he launched after he was banished by Twitter and Facebook last year. His spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ex-president has panned authorities over the Mar-a-Lago search, suggesting it was politically motivated. In one social media post last month, he accused the FBI of carrying out a “sneak attack” on his Florida home.
TIMELINE: How Trump sought to obstruct FBI search of top secret documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago
In a post on Monday, he called the search an “unprecedented and unnecessary Raid and Break-In” at Mar-a-Lago, a 58-bedroom, 17-acre private club located 70 miles north of Miami.
But others have suggested Trump forced federal authorities to take action with his handling of classified government documents.
“People say this was unprecedented,” William Barr, who served as attorney general under Trump and President George H.W. Bush, told Fox News on Friday. “Well, it’s also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club.”
