45th Had More Than 300 Classified Documents
at Mar-a-Lago
The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
45th went through the boxes [turned over in Jan. 2022] himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
...
Aides to Mr. Trump turned over a few dozen additional sensitive documents during a visit to Mar-a-Lago by Justice Department officials in early June. At the conclusion of the search this month, officials left with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information.
We are going to need to know something about what the documents recovered in the August search pertained to--even if it's just what national defense experts told WaPo, "nuclear." That's already out, I don't know what harm it possibly could have done. It's more important than the affidavit: the affidavit may say "nuclear," but the affidavit is only as good as the informant's information it is based on;did they find nuclear? This is from the factually identical U.S. v Kenneth Wayne Ford, Jr. conviction in 2005. It is found at https://www.justice.gov/archive/usao/md/news/2006/Former%20Maryland%20Nsa%20Employee%20Sentenced%20For%20Wrongfully%20Possessing%20Classified%20Information.html
Witnesses from both the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency testified that the classified documents, some of which were displayed to the jury in edited form, were extremely sensitive and related to the national defense of the United States.
That is what we need here. Ford did not have love letters with with foreign counterparts or with his predecessors. He had "extremely sensitive" defense-related material--and enough of their content was shown to a petit jury that he was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison.
...
Even after the extraordinary decision by the F.B.I. to execute a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, investigators have sought additional surveillance footage from the club, people familiar with the matter said.
Among the items [NARA] knew were missing were Mr. Trump’s original letters from the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, and the note that President Barack Obama had left Mr. Trump before he left office.
Letters to/from Kim and Obama are not going to cut it. General Garland did not approve a search warrant on MAL to get back Kim and Obama letters. I am convinced beyond all reasonable doubt that the affidavit said more about much more serious national defense matters than that, and the documents recovered were more serious.
Federal officials have indicated that their initial goal has been to secure any classified documents Mr. Trump was holding at Mar-a-Lago...
"Has been": that extends into the Aug. 8 search, "has been" and continues to be. That makes it sound like a fishing expedition when they did not have evidence beyond "classified" material. If "had been" or "was" that would be past tense, referring to the Jan. and June 2022 retrievals.
The combination of witness interviews and the initial security footage led Justice Department officials to begin drafting a request for a search warrant, the people familiar with the matter said.
For WHAT? "Any classified documents"? Letters with Kim and Obama? THAT WON'T CUT IT! I refuse to believe that Garland approved a search warrant for Kim and Obama correspondence and nothing more specific and more specifically compromising of national security. Maggie Haberman is one of four reporters on the byline of this story. If there was something more serious and dangerous to national security that she was told I think she would have reported something on it. I do not believe that Haberman's sources are less well-placed than WaPo's but they are different and/or they are not as forthcoming as were WaPo's. This story is not as revealing as was WaPo's. What new did we learn here? Virtually nothing. Either WaPo's sources are right about nuclear or Haberman's sources are right about vaguely "classified" material but with the TS/SCI repetition and no mention of the content of TS/SCI. Or NYT has not reported all that it knows. I would rank-order the plausibility of those alternatives as a three-way tie for first place. I think they're equally reasonable. This was a lot of hot air by Haberman, et al and NYT. We need more on the record from Justice.