The line of investigation that led to the FBI’s seizure of Mar-a-Lago

When FBI agents took the surprising step of ransacking the former president’s home Donald Trump On Monday in Florida, the focus quickly shifted to Trump’s record keeping inadequate records and documents of his time in the White House at his Florida residence.

Over the past year and a half, Trump has repeatedly faced questions about the nature of the documents he handed over to the government, as well as others he kept after leaving office and which by law had to be turned over to the National Administration records and records. . .

Monday’s research seemed to be, at least in part, there last climb in a sustained effort to learn more about the fate of some of those materials.

Here is a timeline of Trump’s relationships with the National Archives, as well as the efforts of lawmakers and Department of Justice officials to identify and to retrieve a variety of documents confidential that Trump may have hidden in his Florida home.

January 2021

On January 19, the day before leaving office, Trump sent a letter to David S. Ferriero, US archivist, naming seven senior officials as your representatives to handle all future presidential requests. Among them were Mark Meadows, his chief of staff, and several White House attorneys, including Pat A. Cipollone and Patrick F. Philbin.

Through their work in the White House legal department, many of Trump’s representatives have helped fight the demands of Congress record of the White House during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019.

Trump left the White House on the morning of January 20, just hours before the president took office. Joe Biden.

Reports of the former president’s departure described a very disorganized outing with sloppy packagings, mainly because the participants had spent the previous weeks challenge the 2020 election results and preparing to defend Trump in a second impeachment trial in February.

National Archives said they received a collection of documents from the White House after the administration ended.

He later said that many had been ripped and tapedand that others were delivered in pieces that officials had never reconstructed.

January 2022

It was later revealed that in mid-January the national archives managed to recover 15 boxes of material taken from the White House at the end of Trump’s term and kept in Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club and residence in Palm Beach. Florida.

The agency said it has been negotiating with Trump’s lawyers throughout 2021 for the return of the materials.

The boxes included a series of letters and personal gifts that Trump had received, including correspondence with Kim Jong Un and a congratulatory letter from the former president Barack Obama left Trump.

“These records should have been transferred to NARA from the White House at the end of the Trump administration in January 2021,” the National Archives said in a statement.

February 2022

Sometime after receiving the boxes, National Archives uncovered what appeared to be confidential information within the documents Trump had withheld and reported the incident to the Justice Department for assistance.

The agency publicly confirmed on February 18 that it had found documents marked as containing “confidential information of national security “between the pits.

The finding sparked concern among lawmakers, who began investigating through the House Oversight and Reform Commission.

In a February 24 letter, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, chairman of the committee, requested a detailed report from the National Archives on the contents of the boxes found in Mar-a-Lago, including everything Trump had. crushed or tried to destroy.

“I am deeply concerned that former President Trump may have violated the law through his willful efforts to erase and destroy documents belonging to the American people,” she wrote.

April 2022

In response to the referral of the National Archives to the Justice Department in February, federal authorities reportedly launched their own investigations into how the confidential information ended up in Trump’s Florida home.

In April, the Justice Department ordered the National Archives not to share further details on the materials found in Mar-a-Lago with the Chamber’s Supervisory Committee, suggesting that the FBI was in the preliminary stages of a criminal investigation.

May 2022

In early May, the Department of Justice issued a subpoena to the National Archives for classified documents found inside the boxes recovered in Mar-a-Lago.

Authorities also requested interviews with various White House officials present in the last few days before Trump left the White House.

These passages seemed to confirm that the Justice Department had initiated a grand jury investigation to see if Trump mishandled sensitive documents and that his investigative efforts were gaining momentum.

Sometimes, in the spring, a small group of federal agents, at least one of them involved counterintelligence, he also made an unusual visit to Mar-a-Lago to look for more information on classified documents that may have been kept there.

Trump and at least one of his lawyers are said to have been in attendance for part of the meeting.

It was not immediately clear when the visit took place.

August 2022

On Monday, FBI agents broke into Trump’s home and broke into a safe while conducting a search in what appeared to be the latest attempt to obtain information relating to his handling of classified materials.

In an interview with “Real America’s Voice” on Tuesday, Christina Bobb, Trump’s attorney, appeared to confirm that agents were looking for presidential documents, some of which may contain confidential information.

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