DOJ details path of obstruction culminating in search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago
by Rebecca Beitsch - 08/31/22 6:21 PM ET
When federal authorities went to Mar-a-Lago in June to retrieve classified materials stored there, former President Trump greeted FBI agents and said, “Whatever you need, just let us know.”
But the Justice Department’s second visit to Trump’s Florida home would not be its last — with authorities contending the Trump team instead sought to conceal additional records on the property in spite of a sworn statement from Trump’s attorney indicating they had all been turned over.
A late-Tuesday filing offers the most detailed account yet from the government about the extent to which Trump and his legal team sought to stymie the Justice Department’s efforts to recover the documents, the emergence stemming from a case filed by Trump seeking to halt the investigation.
The most damaging assertion claims that following that visit, government documents were “likely concealed and removed” — a detail renewing focus on the obstruction of justice charges listed in the warrant secured to search the property.
“There are plenty of cases in which the government has declined to prosecute where classified records were stored in unauthorized locations. One of the factors that often resulted in charges being pursued was the extent to which the individual obstructed efforts to locate and recover those records, as well as evidence of willful (as opposed to inadvertent) retention,” said Brad Moss, a national security law expert.
“If nothing else, the government filing fleshed out in new detail not just efforts by Trump to resist the return of the records but apparent efforts to conceal them so government officials could not find them,” he added, pointing to still-sealed evidence submitted to the judge.
The release of the warrant earlier this month revealed Trump’s home was searched in connection with fears over possible violations of the Espionage Act.
But the two other statutes on the warrant covering obstruction of an investigation and willful concealment of records could play just as important a role if the Department of Justice (DOJ) decides to pursue a prosecution.
“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the DOJ wrote in its filing, accompanied by a photo of classified materials recovered earlier this month.
“These concerns are not hypothetical in this case,” it added.
Documents were found in Trump’s personal desk and interspersed among his personal belongings, including his passports.
“The obstructive conduct is going to be, I think, an important factor in the discretionary decision that the department will have to make, which is not can it bring a charge but should it bring a charge?” Andrew Weissmann, a former general counsel for the FBI and a senior prosecutor for the Mueller investigation, told The Hill.
“They’re going to be looking at the full scope of the criminality. And the length and type of obstructive conduct — I think it’s going to weigh heavily in favor of bringing charges,” he said, both for obstruction and for the Espionage Act violations laid out in the warrant.
The Tuesday night filing attacks two main arguments Trump has laid out in the weeks since Mar-a-Lago was searched: that he cooperated with authorities and that he had declassified the materials at his home.
The filing indicates that even following a May subpoena, it took almost a month of negotiations before Trump’s legal team complied with a request to turn over all remaining classified materials.
And even then, the filing notes, “the former President’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room.”
They were instead given a sworn statement that Trump’s team had done a “diligent search” to comply with a subpoena.
Ryan Goodman, co-director of the Reiss Center on Law and Security at New York University School of Law, said the details puncture claims that Trump was “in favor of cooperation.”
“We know now, as the Department of Justice put it, that ‘critically’ they were explicitly prohibited from looking at other boxes in the storage room. I think that was a direct refutation of what would otherwise be an important piece of evidence for the defense,” he said.
In June, Trump’s team turned over 38 documents bearing classified markings. But in August, the Justice Department retrieved more than 100.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former President’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the DOJ wrote in the filing.
more
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/3623167-doj-details-path-of-obstruction-culminating-in-search-of-trumps-mar-a-lago/
