More Classified Documents Found at Trump Storage Unit

Court had ordered another search of Trump-related properties
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 8, 2022 9:45 AM CST
More Classified Documents Found at Trump Storage Unit
Former President Donald Trump announces he's running for president for the third time at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Nov. 15.   (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File)

His Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida wasn't the only place Donald Trump kept classified material, the Washington Post reports, citing sources who say at least two items marked as classified were found recently at a West Palm Beach storage unit used by the former president. Trump's lawyers were ordered to turn over all government records taken from the White House and marked classified under a grand jury subpoena issued in May. Even after the FBI seized classified documents from Mar-a-Lago in August, Justice Department officials worried more had yet to be found and asked Beryl Howell, chief judge of the US District Court for the District of Columbia, to order another search.

Trump's lawyers hired an outside team to search at least three Trump properties, including Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and Trump Tower in New York, "around Thanksgiving," per CBS News. Trump's lawyers say no classified documents were found at those locations. However, at least two classified files were found at the storage unit, sources tell the Post, adding they were immediately turned over to the FBI, which had declined to observe the search. The General Services Administration, the government agency that aids in presidential transitions, had helped rent the storage unit—believed to be the same one from which Trump's lawyers retrieved boxes sent to the National Archives—in July 2021.

The agency worked with Trump staffers to fill the federally run unit with more than 3,000 pounds of items that had been taken from the White House, then stored at an office in Virginia, per the Guardian. There were "suits and swords and wrestling belts and all sorts of things," a source tells the Post. Trump advisers say nothing was cataloged. Though the Post reports the discovery "provides further evidence that Trump and his team did not fully comply" with the subpoena and suggests the government might take further steps to retrieve materials, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung says the former president and his counsel "continue to be cooperative and transparent." (More Donald Trump stories.)

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