This Friday, the Department of Justice released the affidavit used to justify the FBI's search of Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort. Axios reporters Erin Dohert and Alayna Treene wrote that there's been a "shift" in Trumpworld over the last few days in the wake of the search.
"...particularly after conservative John Solomon published a May 10 letter from the National Archives that revealed Trump took more than 700 pages of highly classified material with him after leaving office," their report stated.
"Many Trump allies have grown quiet in recent days after initially leaning hard into their criticism of the search," they added. "There’s a renewed weariness that has seeped into some of the private conversations among Trump advisers and those in his orbit as more of these facts are released to the public, adding to a growing feeling there may be some justification for the search."
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The heavily-redacted FBI affidavit laid out the basis for a Florida judge authorizing the unprecedented raid on the home of a former president, a move which ignited a political firestorm in an already bitterly divided country.
The Republican Trump, who is weighing another White House run in 2024, accused the Justice Department and FBI under Democratic President Joe Biden of conducting a "witch hunt" and said the judge "should never have allowed the Break-in of my home."
According to the affidavit, the FBI opened the investigation after the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) received 15 boxes of records in January 2022 that had been improperly removed from the White House and taken to Mar-a-Lago.
It said sensitive National Defense Information (NDI) was among the records recovered including 67 documents marked as confidential, 92 documents marked as secret and 25 marked as top secret.
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Among the documents was intelligence information from "clandestine human sources," which are among the most tightly-held government secrets.
"Highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records and otherwise unproperly identified," according to the affidavit.
"Several of the documents also contained what appears to be (Trump's) handwritten notes," the affidavit said.
The affidavit said that in June, the Department of Justice informed a Trump lawyer that Mar-a-Lago was "not authorized to store classified information."
When they raided Mar-a-Lago two months later, FBI agents seized a further stash of documents marked "Top Secret," "Secret" and "Confidential."
FBI agents also seized binders of photos, a handwritten note, information about the "President of France," and the grant of clemency made by Trump to Roger Stone, an ally of the former president.
With additional reporting by AFP
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