Damning Evidence Blows Up Trump’s Classified Documents Defense

Recently unsealed court documents suggest that prosecutors in Donald Trump’s classified documents case have even more damning evidence that he tried to obstruct the government’s attempts to retrieve the documents.

According to supporting documentation for a motion filed by Trump’s legal team, the government subpoena for Mar-a-Lago’s security footage seemingly led Trump to try to cover up the relocation of the classified documents. Trump was notified of the subpoena in a June 2022 call with one of his attorneys, which probably prompted Trump to tell staffers to evade security cameras when moving boxes thereafter—or so concluded the district judge who oversaw the grand jury in the case.

“The government has provided sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the June 24, 2022 phone call may have furthered the former president’s efforts to obstruct the government’s investigation,” Judge Beryl Howell wrote in a 2023.

The damning detail is just one of many revelations that have come out of hundreds of pages of court documents that were unsealed Tuesday. Howell’s opinion also described how four more documents with classified markings were discovered on Trump’s property, stashed away in his bedroom, even months after the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago.

Howell also found that prosecutors provided sufficient evidence that Trump had “intentionally concealed the existence of additional documents” in order to mislead the government and impede the FBI’s investigation.

Trump faces 42 felony charges in the case related to illegally retaining national security documents and conspiracy to obstruct justice. But the judge overseeing the case has been dragging her feet for months. Judge Aileen Cannon indefinitely delayed the trial earlier this month, purportedly over issues about how to handle classified evidence. Legal analysts worry that these delays could be the Trump-appointed judge’s way of surreptitiously dismissing the trial altogether.