Last week, the F.B.I. took the extraordinary step of searching Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s private club and Florida home. Their goal? To find materials he was thought to have improperly removed from the White House, including classified documents.An inventory of the material taken from the search showed that agents seized 11 sets of documents with some type of confidential or secret marking on them.We explore some of the latest developments in the case.Guest: Maggie Haberman, a White House correspondent for The New York Times.Background reading: Mr. Trump and his allies have given often conflicting defenses of his retention of classified documents. These shifting explanations follow a familiar playbook.The Justice Department’s warrant for the search and two critical supporting memos shed considerable light on the Mar-a-Lago investigation.Here’s a timeline of the former president’s false and misleading statements on the search.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
The US Department of Justice has filed a motion to unseal a search warrant indicating that former President Trump is being investigated for obstruction of justice and violating the Espionage Act. Sources reveal the FBI is interviewing a tight circle of former Trump White House officials and scrubbing through security footage from Mar-a-Lago.
Lawyers met with DOJ officials in June and handed over material with classified markings, signing statements indicating all material had been returned, however, at least one of the lawyers had reviewed the boxes prior to the meeting in an attempt to identify the specific material requested by the DOJ.
Trump's resistance to giving back documents has led to concerns over obstruction, mishandling of documents and possible violations of the Espionage Act. Retrieval was necessary due to the sensitive nature of the documents that were not clearly secured at Mar-a-Lago.
On Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence called on Republican officials to stop attacking law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Department of Justice for searching Donald Trump's house for classified documents. Meanwhile, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the agency has failed to effectively respond to the COVID pandemic and would undertake a major set of reforms.