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An aerial view of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File), Trump (inset left) (File Photo by: zz/Dennis Van Tine/STAR MAX/IPx)
When the FBI searched Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property on Aug. 8, 2022, what followed were incessant criticisms of an “unannounced raid” and “siege,” a search of the former president’s Florida home his allies also called “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional.” Trump’s defense, however, is now arguing as part of a bid to compel discovery in the Espionage Act case that the FBI’s search didn’t go far enough.
In a supplemental filing to their duel with special counsel Jack Smith, the defense for co-defendant Walt Nauta reiterated their demand, on behalf of Trump and Carlos De Oliveira as well, for “records concerning the FBI’s apparent failure to search several areas of President Trump’s residence during their execution of a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago.”
“That such information would be discoverable is beyond dispute,” the defense asserted, before explaining their theory is that Trump and his co-defendants could hardly be persuasively accused of concealing boxes of classified documents from Trump Attorney 1, namely Evan Corcoran, and a grand jury when there’s “unequivocally material” evidence that may undermine the prosecution’s case.
Calling Smith’s allegations a “conspiracy theory,” the defense first assigned blame to Corcoran and then said the FBI failed to search a “‘hidden room’ behind a bureau in President Trump’s bedroom” and a locked closet.
In February, it was reported that Smith interviewed witnesses about the “hidden room” to which Trump lawyers referred. ABC reported, citing anonymous sources, that the FBI neither searched the locked closet nor the “hidden room” adjacent to Trump’s bedroom.
Notably, the Trump campaign reacted to the report on the “hidden room” by slamming the probes of the former president are an act of desperation on the part of the Biden administration, but now the former president is using the FBI’s search deficiency in a court filing to help mount a defense by providing an alternate explanation for the moving around of the boxes.
“That the FBI failed to search several areas of President Trump’s residence on August 8, 2022, where the boxes are alleged to have been hidden is thus unequivocally material to President Trump as well as Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira’s defense. To that end, it is inconceivable that no communications exist concerning the FBI’s failure to search an area of President Trump’s residence on August 8,” the filing said in support of discovery. “Despite its knowledge that the area existed – a number of witnesses were asked about it before the grand jury – and the fact that at the time of their search, President Trump’s bedroom was under construction and thus any boxes that had been left there would necessarily have been moved to permit the construction.”
In closing, the defense accused Smith of willful “ignorance” about “this failure.”
“Yet, there is no evidence that any effort was made by the SCO to have this area searched at any point in time. Given the allegation that boxes of documents with classification markings were hidden and/or concealed in President Trump’s residence during Trump Attorney 1’s search, it is inexplicable that areas of former President Trump’s residence were not searched,” the defense said. “Indeed, the only explanation for this failure is that the SCO intends to rely on its ignorance of what was in former President Trump’s residence as part of its pitch to the jury that boxes were moved for the purpose of concealing their contents from the investigation.”
Read the supplemental filing here.
