Four months after an FBI raid recovered thousands of sensitive documents from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president’s attorneys discovered even more classified pages—this time in his bedroom.
In a newly unsealed 2023 opinion, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell described how four more documents with classified markings were discovered on Trump’s property, stashed away in his bedroom, even months after the FBI search.
“Notably, no excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” Howell wrote.
“Instead, the government has provided evidence to demonstrate that the full arc of the criminal violation had already concluded more than six months before this search of Mar-a-Lago, when the evidence demonstrates that the former president intentionally failed to provide all of the classified documents in his possession to the government with the June 3, 2022 Certification,” she continued, adding that Trump’s office’s decision to turn the box over with the four records in January 2023 did not undermine that fact that he withheld them after a subpoena and a federal investigation.
Howell also found that prosecutors provided sufficient evidence that Trump had “intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents” in order to mislead the government and impede the FBI’s investigation.
Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to willful retention of national security information, corruptly concealing documents, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. But the judge actually overseeing the former president’s classified documents case seems to have no motivation to move forward with the trial. Earlier this month, Judge Aileen Cannon ordered a stay on Trump’s legal requirement to give the government advance notice of which classified materials will be discussed—but offered no expiration date for the theoretically temporary reprieve.
Legal analysts have worried that a strategy of continual delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.
Meanwhile, Trump has practically confessed that he took the sensitive records. In an interview on Newsmax, Trump claimed point blank that he actually did take the classified documents, describing the process of shamelessly packing them away while leaving office.
“I took ’em very legally,” Trump told the far-right media network in March. “And I wasn’t hiding them.”
Ultimately, Cannon’s extended time allowance for the GOP presidential nominee just presents another roadblock to actually trying Trump for any of his alleged misconduct. And if he wins the election in November, Trump could potentially pardon himself since all of the alleged crimes are federal charges.
