It was four months following the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence when his lawyers found four “classified” documents in the president’s bedroom.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell cited this and other revelations in a newly released 2023 ruling that found prosecutors had offered strong evidence that Trump had intentionally concealed sensitive national security documents in his residence and attempted to hide them when the Justice Department sought to retrieve them.
Howell said in an 87-page judgment that special counsel Jack Smith could question former president Evan Corcoran on subjects typically protected by attorney-client privilege because it was likely that Trump committed crimes. Howell stated that the prosecution had proven that Trump was aware that Corcoran had been assigned the responsibility of notifying the government that all secret materials had been returned in June 2022, a claim that Trump “knew to be wrong.”
Howell points out that at least two further rounds of secret papers were discovered on Trump’s property following fresh searches, but the FBI’s August 2022 check of Mar-a-Lago revealed that scores of other sensitive documents remained on the property.
In his opinion, Howell, who was chief judge of the federal district court in Washington, D.C. at the time, described the discovery of four documents with classification markings in Trump’s private quarters months after they had been subpoenaed by prosecutors and the FBI had searched the property extensively. Howell’s level of disbelief varied throughout the opinion.
The former president’s bedroom at Mar-a-Lago was found with secret materials, and no explanation is given as to how he could have missed them, wrote Howell, an appointment of Obama’s.
Howell included a footnote in which he said that another Trump adviser associated with his Save America PAC had admitted in 2021 to taking a personal laptop provided by the PAC and scanning the contents of the package containing the classified materials.
Howell claimed that in January 2023, the box containing the four records was given to the FBI by Trump’s office.
Along with Howell’s judgment, a slew of additional previously sealed grand jury records pertaining to the investigation into Trump’s alleged concealment of several classified materials after his 2021 departure from office—including some of the most sensitive military secrets—were unsealed. The documents were disclosed on Tuesday following extensive negotiations regarding redactions between Trump’s lawyers and Smith’s team and South Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who is an appointee of the president.
Even though the opinion strongly criticized Trump’s behavior, it was Trump himself who cited it in an attempt to have the case against him dismissed due to “prosecutorial misconduct.” Additionally, that document was newly unsealed on Tuesday. In a footnote, Howell chastised prosecutor Julie Edelstein for criticizing another Trump attorney, Tim Parlatore, for being too eager to disclose attorney-client protected information and for wondering if Trump’s resistance to waive the privilege indicated his reluctance.
“According to texts on standard grand jury practices, it is generally agreed that it is improper to suggest that adverse inferences should be drawn if a witness exercises some right or privilege,” Howell wrote, quoting the former president.
The interaction, she added, was mostly irrelevant to the Corcoran-related concern.
Cannon is due to appear before the court on Wednesday, but she has lately hinted that Trump’s trial is not likely to begin until late summer, if not later.
In her opinion, Chief Judge Howell stated that Trump associate Walt Nauta was “clearly dissembling” when he lied to the FBI during an interview regarding his involvement in transporting boxes that were later discovered to contain secret documents. The grand jury proceedings that led to Trump’s criminal charges in the case were presided over by Howell. Along with Trump, Nauta was eventually charged with trying to prevent government officials from retrieving the secret documents.
Additionally, Howell meticulously detailed the conflicts that arose between Trump’s legal team and Smith’s team regarding searches of Trump’s other properties and whether or not Trump’s lawyers had been trying to thwart the prosecutors’ attempts to seize the remaining secret documents from Trump’s residence.
She not only gave Smith’s team permission to examine Corcoran, but she also agreed that 88 papers that Corcoran had been trying to keep secret due to attorney-client privilege should be made public as they were “sufficiently ‘in furtherance’ of the former president’s criminal scheme.”