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Donald Trump has turned over to the government hundreds of documents marked as classified and improperly retained at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a review conducted by the National Archives, the custodian of presidential records, and sources familiar with the matter.
The government has retrieved highly sensitive materials on three separate occasions: one set of documents facilitated by the National Archives in January, one set went to the justice department in June, and another set was seized by the FBI in a search two weeks ago.
And it helps to explain why the justice department opened a national security investigation into the unauthorized retention of government secrets by Trump that resulted in FBI agents executing a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago to recover any remaining official records.
The argument, according to several former US attorneys, is that the justice department should not be able to use in a prosecution any documents that are privileged but are not subject to the crime-fraud exception, which concerns materials have to do with, or is in furtherance of a crime.
According to reporting by the Guardian and others, shortly after opening the investigation, the justice department grew concerned that there might be additional classified materials being retained at Mar-a-Lago that they needed to collect, according to sources briefed on the matter.
The justice department interviewed a number of witnesses, and in May issued a subpoena for remaining classified documents. The following month, Jay Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence section at the agency, and three other officials went to Florida to retrieve the materials.
The statement was signed by the custodian of records. The custodian is understood to be another Trump lawyer, Christina Bobb, though a person close to Trump declined to confirm or deny whether she was the custodian.
The justice department were also alarmed that after it subpoenaed the Trump Organization, which runs the Mar-a-Lago property, on 22 June for security camera footage including of the hallway directly outside the storage area, it showed people taking boxes in and out.
It was not clear whether the boxes seen on the security camera tape were related to presidential or government records. The New York Times reported that the justice department is now also seeking footage from the weeks leading up to the FBI search conducted on 8 August.
