U.S. House panels want scrutiny of files seized from Trump's estate

Democrats say Trump put U.S. security ‘at grave risk’

National Archives workers load boxes outside the White House on Jan. 15, 2021, five days before then-President Donald Trump left office. Trump said Friday that he had declassified all the material in his possession while still in office without producing documentation to that effect.
(The New York Times/Stefani Reynolds)
National Archives workers load boxes outside the White House on Jan. 15, 2021, five days before then-President Donald Trump left office. Trump said Friday that he had declassified all the material in his possession while still in office without producing documentation to that effect. (The New York Times/Stefani Reynolds)


The House Democrats' top investigators on Saturday asked the director of National Intelligence to conduct a review and damage assessment of the boxes of highly classified information seized by the FBI this week from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

The letter was sent to National Intelligence Director Avril Haines by House Oversight Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and cites the search warrant cataloging the classified documents of various levels of sensitivity found at Mar-a-Lago.

"Former President Trump's conduct has potentially put our national security at grave risk," the two wrote, asking also for a classified briefing on the assessment as soon as possible. "This issue demands a full review, in addition to the ongoing law enforcement inquiry."

The two also voiced concern that the FBI is looking in part at highly classified documents related to nuclear weapons, as first reported by The Washington Post.

"If this report is true, it is hard to overstate the national security danger that could emanate from the reckless decision to remove and retain this material," the letter states.

On Monday, the FBI executed a court-authorized search warrant at Trump's Florida home and removed around 20 boxes of documents, including "various classified TS/SCI documents," according to a written inventory. That translates to top secret/sensitive compartmented information, a highly classified category of government secrets and top-secret papers.

The warrant also said that federal agents were investigating the potential violation of three different federal laws, including a part of the Espionage Act outlawing gathering, transmitting, or losing national defense information. The warrant also cites the destruction of records and concealment or mutilation of government material.

Schiff and Maloney write that in accordance with Intelligence Community directives issued by the national intelligence director, a damage assessment is necessary "to evaluate actual or potential damage to national security resulting from the unauthorized disclosure or compromise of classified national intelligence."

The boxes recovered by the FBI come after months of back-and-forth between investigators and representatives from Trump's team after the end of the Trump presidency. The National Archives first recovered 15 boxes and documents, mementos and classified information belonging to the U.S. government in January of this year from Mar-a-Lago before the matter was referred to the Department of Justice.

An unauthorized disclosure of classified information or U.S. weapons could provide helpful information to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering U.S. nuclear systems. A damage assessment will evaluate the extent of the damage caused by an unauthorized disclosure.

The former president previously disclosed highly classified intelligence to Russian officials in 2017 that jeopardized a critical source of intelligence on the Islamic State.

'ALL SENT BACK'

Also Saturday, The New York Times reported that at least one of Trump's lawyers signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mar-a-Lago had been returned to the government, four people with knowledge of the document said.

The written declaration was made after a visit June 3 to Mar-a-Lago by Jay I. Bratt, the top counterintelligence official in the Justice Department's national security division.

The existence of the signed declaration could help explain why a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction was cited by the department as one basis for seeking the warrant used to carry out the daylong search. It also helps to further explain the sequence of events that prompted the Justice Department's decision to conduct the search after months in which it had tried to resolve the matter through discussions with Trump and his team.

Trump said Friday that he had declassified all the material in his possession while he was still in office. He did not provide any documentation that he had done so.

In an appearance on Fox News on Friday night, conservative writer John Solomon, whom Trump has designated as one of his representatives to interact with the National Archives, read a statement from the former president's office claiming that Trump had a "standing order" that documents taken out of the Oval Office and brought to the White House residence "were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them."

A spokesperson for the former president, Taylor Budowich, said Saturday, "Just like every Democrat-fabricated witch hunt previously, the water of this unprecedented and unnecessary raid is being carried by a media willing to run with suggestive leaks, anonymous sources and no hard facts."

In an effort to resolve the dispute with the National Archives, Bratt and other officials visited Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., in early June, briefly meeting Trump while they were there. Two of Trump's lawyers, M. Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb, spoke with Bratt and a small number of investigators he traveled with, people briefed on the meeting said.

Corcoran and Bobb showed Bratt and his team boxes holding material Trump had taken from the White House that were being kept in a storage area, the people said.

According to two people briefed on the visit, Bratt and his team left with additional material marked classified and around that time also obtained the written declaration from a Trump lawyer attesting that all the material marked classified in the boxes had been turned over.

A short time after the meeting, according to people briefed on it, Bratt sent Corcoran an email telling him to get a more secure padlock for the room. Trump's team complied.

The Justice Department also subpoenaed surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago, including views from outside the storage room. According to a person briefed on the matter, the footage prompted concern among investigators about the handling of the material. It is not clear what time period that footage was from.

Over recent months, investigators were in contact with roughly a half-dozen of Trump's current aides who had knowledge of how the documents were handled, two people briefed on the approaches said. At least one witness provided the investigators with information that led them to want to further press Trump for material, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

HARSH WORDS FROM HARRIS

Addressing the anger of Trump supporters over the search, Vice President Kamala Harris has condemned last week's attempted attack on an FBI office and criticized the former president's backers for incendiary rhetoric that has fueled a backlash against law enforcement.

"I will say, as a former prosecutor, but as a citizen of our nation, any attacks on law enforcement are completely unacceptable," Harris told reporters aboard Air Force Two on Friday. "And any so-called leader who engages in rhetoric that in any way suggests that law enforcement should be exposed to that kind of danger is irresponsible and can result in dangerous activities."

Harris is the highest-ranking White House official to comment on the political fallout.

"It's just highly irresponsible of anyone who calls themselves a leader and certainly anyone who represents the United States of America to engage in rhetoric for the sake of some political objective that can result in harm to law enforcement officers and agents," Harris said.

Information for this article was contributed by Jacqueline Alemany of The Washington Post; by Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush of The New York Times; and by Iain Marlow of Bloomberg News.


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