Federal prosecutors used surveillance footage to determine within weeks of collecting subpoenaed classified documents from Donald Trump last year that there might be more national security materials at Mar-a-Lago, according to newly unsealed descriptions in the FBI search warrant application.
Much of the justification for executing a search warrant on Trump’s residence in Florida was detailed in the sprawling indictment charging him with retention of national defense information and obstruction of justice.
But the parts of the affidavit released on Thursday – filed by the justice department after the federal magistrate judge in the Trump documents case ordered the release – provided a clearer explanation of the probable cause used to justify the FBI search.
Last June, shortly after Trump’s lawyers returned a folder of 38 classified documents to prosecutors after being issued a subpoena, prosecutors subpoenaed footage from surveillance cameras in the vicinity of the storage room, the affidavit said.
The hard drive that was turned over in July 2022 included tapes from a camera called “South Tunnel Liquor” that recorded the gold-painted door to the storage room and had a field of vision just wide enough to capture the exit to the tunnel leading back to the rest of the Mar-a-Lago property.
When prosecutors reviewed the footage, they noticed that Trump’s valet Walt Nauta had removed more than 50 boxes from the storage room but did not bring the same number back before Trump’s then lawyer Evan Corcoran looked through them for any classified documents.
“The current location of the boxes removed from the storage room but not returned to it is unknown,” said the FBI agent on the investigation who drafted the affidavit, adding that it was clear from the lack of a lid that at least one of the boxes that Nauta removed contained documents.
Prosecutors suspected that Trump might have kept some classified documents as his lawyers had only returned 38 papers, a far smaller number than they had anticipated given the 15 boxes Trump sent to the National Archives earlier in the year contained 200 classified documents.
The conclusion inside the justice department’s national security division, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter and the language in the affidavit, was that 50 boxes should have yielded hundreds of classified documents if 15 boxes yielded 200.
The suspicion that Trump had played what a federal judge later referred to as a “shell game” with the boxes during the criminal investigation last year proved to be correct when the FBI executed the warrant in August 2022 and seized 103 classified documents from the storage room and Trump’s office.
Other parts of the affidavit – including the discussion about whether Trump declassified the documents provided by his close associate Kash Patel, who the Guardian has reported was granted immunity in the criminal investigation – are still redacted.
A Trump spokesperson said in a statement that the affidavit showed Trump was open to curing his retention of national security documents but “the weaponized DOJ rejected this offer of cooperation” in an effort to “inflict maximum political damage” on his 2024 campaign.
The US magistrate judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the justice department’s application for a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago, ordered more parts of the affidavit to be made public after the Guardian and other news organizations filed a motion last week seeking the document to be released.
Prosecutors last month charged Trump with violating the Espionage Act for retaining national security documents. They also charged Trump and Nauta with conspiring to obstruct justice by causing classified documents to not be returned to the government by moving the boxes out of the storage room.
The former president has pleaded not guilty to all charges in federal district court in Miami. Nauta also pleaded not guilty when he appeared for his arraignment on Thursday that was rescheduled after he was unable to find a Florida-based lawyer.
