We now have more information about how prosecutors conducted their search for classified documents that former President Donald Trump kept after leaving office, despite court orders requiring that he turn them over.
On Wednesday, a magistrate judge unsealed additional portions of an affidavit submitted by federal authorities when they sought a court order allowing them to raid Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida last August. It has new details on security footage that showed boxes of documents being moved and the interactions Trump’s lawyers had with prosecutors. But it still leaves some questions about the case unanswered, including how prosecutors came to suspect that Trump hadn’t turned over all of the documents in his possession.
The new version of the affidavit was released just before Trump’s body man Walt Nauta, who was indicted last month alongside the former president, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him Thursday. He has been accused of allegedly acting at Trump’s direction to move boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago in an attempt to hide them from prosecutors. Trump has also pleaded not guilty to all 37 counts in the indictment, including willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act and one count of false statements and representations.
Here are the latest revelations from the affidavit:
1) Prosecutors relied on security footage to build their case against Trump
Newly unsealed parts of the affidavit cite security footage of a hallway in the Mar-a-Lago basement, which led to the storage room where many of the documents were kept. The Trump Organization turned over that footage in response to a June 2022 subpoena.
The affidavit describes footage showing Nauta moving boxes out of the storage room and the anteroom leading to it on four separate occasions between May 24, 2022, and June 2, 2022. During that period, the FBI questioned him about the locations of the boxes. The affidavit said that the footage…
Read the full article here