A late-night filing of legal briefs outlining previously unknown allegations about the FBI raid on former U.S. president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort exposed gaping holes in his version of events, according to an expert.
The U.S. Department of Justice is accusing Trump of obstructing its investigation to retrieve sensitive documents, taking the extraordinary step of releasing a photo of files marked "highly classified" and "top secret" that it says were seized from his Florida home.
The DOJ says it has evidence that "government records were likely concealed and removed," and that "efforts were taken to obstruct the government's investigation."
The filings suggest criminality, but don't prove it. No legal actions have been announced.
“The former president and several of his lawyers … have a lot of criminal exposure here,†Bradley Moss, a national security attorney in the Washington, D.C. , area, told CTV National News Washington Correspondent Richard Madan on Wednesday.
“Mostly for false representations to the FBI and to NARA (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration), as well as the efforts to keep these documents located at Mar-a-Lago and to conceal them from the government.â€
Earlier this month, the FBI exercised a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, seizing numerous classified documents. Trump and his lawyers claim the documents discovered at the resort in Palm Beach, Fla., had been previously declassified when he was in office.
However, legal briefs filed by the U.S. Department of Justice filings say that this argument was never made in the months that NARA was attempting to get the former president to return the documents, with the details pointing to a new potential charge: obstruction of justice.
Moss, who primarily deals with employees within the government, military or intelligence community and has experience going through security clearance disciplinary actions, said he was blown away when he read the filings late last night.
“Boom! That’s what went through my mind,†he said. “Bombshell. This was a complete evisceration of the Trump team’s legal arguments.â€
He said that because the government was able to file documents about the raid itself, it was able to be more transparent with details that the public likely wouldn’t have seen for months.
“The government was allowed to outline a lot of facts that otherwise would not have come out in this pre-indictment phase during a criminal investigation,†he said of what is alleged in the documents. “They were allowed to walk you through a lot more details on how this investigation unfolded, what the problems were with the Trump team’s responses as they were trying to work through the problem with the records, and how the obstruction angle came into play.â€
The filings laid out how the government said it learned that records were being moved, and attempted numerous times to have those records returned, only to receive just some of the missing documents each time.
“After they went in June with the subpoena and they got the sworn affidavit from Trump lawyers saying that’s it, there's nothing more, the government found evidence that there were in fact documents still on the property, located in areas other than the storage room,†Moss said the filings suggest. “And sure enough, that’s what the search warrant found.â€
He said that Trump essentially “puts himself in these situations.
“It could’ve been written off as a small mistake if, after being told that these records were still at Mar-a-Lago, he had turned everything back over to the archives in 2021. It would’ve been ‘no harm, no foul.’ But Donald Trump doesn’t work like that.â€
The filings claim that Trump’s lawyers fought to delay the return of documents, battling with NARA and the FBI for months, only to still provide just some of the documents when presented with a subpoena. According to the filing, a Trump lawyer stated at the time that all of the documents had been stored in one storage room, and that there were none in any private space.
“Finally, it took a search warrant to recover the remaining 100 classified records sitting in places like Donald Trump’s desk in his personal office,†Moss said.
“It’s significant criminal exposure. There are people who have gone to jail for less under the espionage act. And in respect to obstruction — to what extent did Donald Trump lie to his lawyers? To what extent did the lawyers act irresponsibly or possibly lie to the FBI? That’s the kind of information we still don’t know for sure.â€
While the criminal element is suggested, it's not proven in the filings, and hasn't been tested in court.
Trump’s lawyers “absolutely†need their own lawyers now, he said.
“And as I’ve said for many years and others coined it before me, 'MAGA' in my view stands for ‘Make Attorneys Get Attorneys.’ This is not the first Trump lawyer to get in trouble and it probably won’t be the last, but yes, if I was Christina Bobb, if I was Alina Habba, if I was Evan Corcoran, I’d be hiring a lawyer right now to protect myself from potential criminal exposure, because they all became material fact witnesses in this ongoing criminal probe.â€
Whether Trump will be indicted on obstruction charges — after having avoided charges in an obstruction investigation related to an investigation into whether his 2016 presidential campaign had colluded with Russia — remains to be seen.
“It is my view, based off the information we already have, that Donald Trump could be, and in my professional opinion, should be indicted,†Moss said. “Though I do not believe it will happen before the mid-term elections in November.â€
