It was last August when FBI agents executed a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, retrieving classified documents that Donald Trump took and refused to give back. As the criminal investigation into the former president’s scandal advanced, one of the important questions hanging overhead was entirely straightforward: Did the Republican still have other materials in his possession that should’ve been returned?
Justice Department officials have said for months that they believe the answer is definitely yes, and those claims have been bolstered by subsequent disclosures. In early December, for example, Trump’s lawyers turned over at least two items with classified markings to the FBI, after a private firm hired by the former president found the materials in a Trump-owned storage unit in West Palm Beach.
Late Friday afternoon, as NBC News reported, we learned of another such disclosure.
Donald Trump’s legal team recently turned over a folder bearing classified markings to the Justice Department that it said was found at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, a senior law enforcement official told NBC News. Trump’s lawyers told the Justice Department it came from Mar-a-Lago, so they are going under that assumption, the official said, adding that the folder was found last month and Trump’s lawyers turned it over voluntarily.
For now, there’s quite a bit of uncertainty about what, if anything, was in the folder. What’s more, there’s some question about whether there were other revelations: An Associated Press report added, for example, that in addition to the folder, Trump’s lawyers also recently provided federal investigators with a laptop belonging to an aide to the former president.
For his part, Timothy Parlatore, the attorney representing Trump in the special counsel’s investigation, told CNN that the folder in question — marked “Classified Evening Summary” — was empty and found in the former president’s bedroom.
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