MIAMI — A newly released version of an FBI affidavit for a search warrant of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach estate adds a few key details of how and when investigators discovered and obtained security camera footage that shows boxes allegedly filled with classified documents being moved around his Mar-a-Lago property.
The information in the affidavit was sought by media organizations after the former president was charged in South Florida last month with deliberately retaining classified materials from the U.S. government. Justice Department prosecutors agreed to disclose some additional portions of the 39-page affidavit for the search warrant dated Aug. 5, 2022, though many parts are still redacted, according to an order issued late Wednesday by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart in West Palm Beach federal court.
The Justice Department’s probe had ramped up in May of last year when a federal grand jury issued an initial subpoena for classified documents that Trump had moved from the White House to his residence and club at Mar-a-Lago.
But in June, the case took a crucial turn when a Trump lawyer told a federal prosecutor that there were security cameras near the storage area where investigators suspected some boxes containing classified documents were being kept, according to the partially unsealed FBI affidavit. On June 24, 2022, a second grand jury subpoena seeking the video footage was delivered to Trump’s lawyer.
The partially redacted subpoena asked for the following: “Any and all surveillance records, videos, images, photographs, and/or CCTV from internal cameras located on ground floor (basement) ... on the Mar-a-Lago property located at 1100 S Ocean Blvd., Palm Beach, FL 33480 from the time period of January 10, 2022, to present.”
Though limited, legal experts say the new information is important, helping explain what led to the charges of conspiring to obstruct Justice Department’s efforts to recover classified documents against the former president. That second grand jury subpoena uncovered video surveillance footage that prosecutors say show Trump aide Walt Nauta moving boxes between a storage room and other areas at Mar-a-Lago, before the FBI’s raid in August 2022.
“This evidence is at the core of the case against Trump,” said former U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Sloman, who now heads a Miami law firm.
The security footage contained video images from April 23 to June 24, 2022, as Trump was being asked to return documents. The footage revealed that a Trump staffer, identified as “Witness 5,” was moving dozens of boxes from the storage area to an anteroom and then returning some of them between May 24 and June 2, 2022. FBI agents questioned Witness 5 on May 26, 2022, during which “the location of the boxes was a significant subject of questioning,” according to the partially disclosed FBI affidavit. In the indictment, Nauta is accused of lying to FBI agents on that day about the location of the boxes.
The Trump attorney who coordinated the turnover of the classified records and surveillance footage was Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor turned defense attorney in the Washington, D.C., area. Corcoran, who testified before the grand jury in March, is identified as “Attorney 1” in the indictment charging Trump with willfully retaining national defense information in violation of the Espionage Act, conspiring to obstruct justice and making a false statement in connection with the government’s subpoena for records.
In the obstruction conspiracy count, Trump is accused of misleading Attorney 1 — Corcoran — who represented the former president as the lawyer tried to compile classified documents at Mar-a-Lago for the subpoena a year ago. At Trump’s direction, Nauta assisted the former president in this task by moving 64 boxes including some classified documents from the storage room to Trump’s residence and then brought back only 30 of those boxes to the storage room, according to the indictment. On June 2, 2022, Attorney 1 checked the boxes in the storage room and found 38 classified records and set those aside in a folder to turn over to federal investigators.
After Attorney 1 finished sealing the folder with the documents, Nauta took the lawyer to meet with Trump in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago, the indictment said. After the lawyer confirmed his search of the boxes in the storage area, Trump said to him: “Did you find anything? ... Is it bad? Good?”
Trump and Attorney 1 discussed what to do with the folder and whether the lawyer should bring them to his hotel and put them in a safe, the indictment said.
“During that conversation, Trump made a plucking motion, as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1,” the indictment said. “He made a funny motion as though — well OK why don’t you take them with you to your hotel and if there’s anything really bad in there, like, you know, pluck it out,” Attorney 1 memorialized the conversation, as noted in the indictment. “And that was the motion that he made. He didn’t say that.”
On the evening of June 2, 2022, Attorney 1 contacted the Justice Department and asked that an FBI agent meet him at Mar-a-Lago the next day to retrieve the classified documents in response to the subpoena.
However, unsatisfied with the response, the Justice Department obtained a search warrant based on video surveillance of the documents being moved around at Trump’s residence and directed an FBI raid of the Palm Beach estate and club last August, when agents discovered 102 additional government records containing national defense, weapons and nuclear information still on his property.
The seizure of those records, which Trump had removed from the White House when he left office in January 2021, form the foundation of the special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal case along with the obstruction charge.
In the indictment, Trump is charged with deliberately keeping documents with classified markings at his Palm Beach estate. It also cites two occasions during the summer of 2021 when the former president allegedly shared classified information about a Defense Department plan to attack a foreign country with a writer, publisher and two staffers at his Bedminster Club in New Jersey. He is also accused of showing a classified map about a U.S. military operation to a representative of his political action committee. But Trump’s sharing that sensitive information is not among the 31 counts alleging violations of the Espionage Act.
“The classified documents Trump stored in the boxes included information regarding defense and weapons capabilities of both the U.S. and foreign countries; United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation to a foreign attack,” according to the indictment. It noted that the former president stored them in various locations at Mar-a-Lago, including a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office, his bedroom and a storage room.
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