Additional classified records were discovered in former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago bedroom after the FBI search of his Florida estate, court records filed Tuesday reveal.
The detail is buried in filings stemming from a separate legal battle as Trump asks a judge to toss his indictment for prosecutorial misconduct, unsealing for the first time many of the records at play as prosecutors presented their case to a Washington, D.C., grand jury.
That includes a decision from Judge Beryl Howell, who oversaw those proceedings, which indicates Trump was subpoenaed again in January 2023, prompting his attorneys to later turn over a “mostly empty folder marked ‘Classified Evening Summary.’”
She expressed disbelief at how Trump could be unaware of classified records still in his home in Florida well after the August 2022 search of his property.
“Notably, no excuse is provided as to how the former president could miss the classified-marked documents found in his own bedroom at Mar-a-Lago,” Howell wrote.
It’s another remarkable detail in a case where classified records were found in numerous locations that alarmed prosecutors, including a ballroom stage and even a bathroom.
The newly unsealed opinion follows a push by special counsel Jack Smith to secure further testimony from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran along with 88 pages of his own records he said were protected by attorney-client privilege.
In the filings, Howell spends ample time reviewing Trump’s legal culpability, including the obstruction of justice charges that would accompany those for willfully retaining classified records.
She also reflects on his role in concealing information from his attorney and encouraging his now co-defendant Walt Nauta to return to a storage room boxes they moved to hide them from Corcoran without being caught on camera.
“The government urged that this scramble to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of the June 24, 2022 phone call reflects the former president’s realization that the removal of the boxes from the storage room before search was captured on camera—and his attempts to ensure that any subsequent movement of the boxes back to the storage room could occur off-camera,” she wrote.
“This theory draws support from the curious absence of any video footage showing the return of the remaining boxes to the storage room.”
In a superseding indictment, the Department of Justice accused Trump of ordering the footage deleted, one of 41 different counts he faced in the case.
Howell later notes Trump’s role in encouraging Corcoran to submit a certification to the government that all records had been returned was “a representation that the former president … knew to be wrong.”
Howell also explained her rationale for lifting attorney-client privilege, noting “the crime-fraud exception pierces the attorney-client privilege even when the attorney is an unknowing tool of his client.”
The opinion was shared as an exhibit from Trump’s legal team, even as it seems to favor Smith’s position, showing how Howell agreed prosecutors had demonstrated the former president’s conduct met the elements of each law he was later charged with violating.
The matter is now before Judge Aileen Cannon, who is still weighing this motion and several others asking her to toss the case.
In the meanwhile, she has indefinitely delayed Trump’s trial, refusing to set a new trial date in an order earlier this month while detailing she needed more time to weigh each of the former president’s motions.
— Updated at 6:20 p.m. EDT