The Department of Justice obtained security CCTV footage from inside Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach, Florida, mansion turned private club where former president Donald Trump maintains an office and residence, before requesting a search warrant for the ex-president’s home.
According to multiple reports, federal investigators issued a subpoena for the CCTV footage to the Trump Organization — the ex-president’s eponymous real estate and hotel business — earlier this year after a meeting between DoJ representatives and Mr Trump’s attorneys at his Florida home. The meeting was part of a long-running effort by federal officials to recover government property — presidential records, some highly classified — that Mr Trump improperly removed from the White House before his term expired in January 2021.
One of Mr Trump’s attorneys, ex-One America News host Christina Bobb, said on the Trump-aligned Real America’s Voice TV channel that Mr Trump and his legal team had been “extremely cooperative” with the federal agents, who were granted “free access” to the mansion.
Officials with the Justice Department and the National Archives and Records Administration (Nara) have been negotiating with Mr Trump for the return of the records from his administration, which under US law are government property. In January, Nara told the House Oversight Committee that the ex-president had turned over 15 boxes of records, including documents the agency characterised as so highly classified that they could not be easily describe without running afoul of US law protecting national defence secrets.
Mr Trump has claimed that he was cooperating with the government’s efforts before Monday, when FBI agents executed a search warrant at his home and office at Mar-a-Lago. In the days since, he and his allies have claimed — without offering any evidence — that the search of his property is part of an improper effort to impede his potential candidacy in the 2024 election, and have accused President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland of weaponising federal law enforcement against a potential political rival of Mr Biden’s.
Thus far, the Justice Department has declined to explain its actions or comment on the investigation into Mr Trump’s retention of federal records past his time in the White House. But legal experts say his possession of any government documents, classified or otherwise, could expose him to significant criminal liability. One law signed by Mr Trump during his time in the White House significantly stiffened the penalty for improper handling of classified information, extending the prison term for violators from one year to five.
