Surveillance of Mar-a-Lago liquor tunnel was key to Trump's document 'shell game': DOJ

According to the partially unredacted indictment filed against Donald Trump that led to a 37-count felony case in Florida, the Department of Justice's concerns that the former president was hiding documents was confirmed by surveillance video from a camera that documented comings and goings in a tunnel used to transport liquor.

As the Guardian's Hugo Lowell reported on Thursday, a hard drive that was handed over to DOJ investigators contained video from a camera designated as "South Tunnel Liquor."

A review of the footage showed boxes of documents being moved which set off alarm bells at the Justice Department.

According to the report, "When prosecutors reviewed the footage, they noticed that Trump’s valet Walt Nauta had removed more than 50 boxes from the storage room but did not bring the same number back before Trump’s then lawyer Evan Corcoran looked through them for any classified documents."

Read more: Justice Department moves to block Trump deposition in Peter Strzok's firing suit

In the affidavit that led to a search of Mar-a-Lago, an FBI agent wrote, “The current location of the boxes removed from the storage room but not returned to it is unknown,” which confirmed to investigators that there was more to be recovered than the former president has already returned.

"The conclusion inside the justice department’s national security division, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter and the language in the affidavit, was that 50 boxes should have yielded hundreds of classified documents if 15 boxes yielded 200," the report states before adding, "The suspicion that Trump had played what a federal judge later referred to as a 'shell game' with the boxes during the criminal investigation last year proved to be correct when the FBI executed the warrant in August 2022 and seized 103 classified documents from the storage room and Trump’s office."

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