Two weeks ago, former President Donald Trump angrily accused FBI agents of confiscating his passports while executing the search at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
"Wow! In the raid by the FBI of Mar-a-Lago, they stole my three Passports (one expired), along with everything else," Trump posted to Truth Social at the time. "This is an assault on a political opponent at a level never seen before in our Country. Third World!"
Ultimately, Justice Department officials returned his passports. But as part of a legal filing late Tuesday night, attorneys for the government explained there was an actual, valid reason why the passports were seized, according to Newsweek — and that reason further incriminates Trump.
"The agency said the former president's claim the FBI agents had improperly taken three of his passports while looking for sensitive material removed from the White House at his Florida home is 'incorrect,'" reported Ewan Palmer. "The Department of Justice explained that the passports were seized by the FBI as they were held in a desk drawer in Trump's office which also included classified documents, and therefore within the scope of the search warrant and relevant to the investigation."
"The government seized the contents of a desk drawer that contained classified documents and governmental records commingled with other documents," explained prosecutors in the filing. "The other documents included two official passports, one of which was expired, and one personal passport, which was expired. The location of the passports is relevant evidence in an investigation of unauthorized retention and mishandling of national defense information."
As The Guardian's Hugo Lowell noted on Twitter, by seizing Trump's passports and cataloguing that they were in the same drawer as classified information, the Justice Department now has clear evidence that Trump himself must have been reviewing and holding onto these documents personally — as opposed to his staffers or lawyers doing so.
This comes as the Justice Department released damning new pictures as part of the same filing, showing documents with prominent "SECRET" and "TOP SECRET" cover pages that were seized as part of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.
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