New Photos From Mar-a-Lago Search Show Trump Personal Items Alongside Classified Documents

A photo included in motion filed by special counsel Jack Smith on June 24, 2024, shows boxes in the storage room at Mar-a-Lago. (Department of Justice)

Photographs that were taken during the August 2022 search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Florida were released in a court filing earlier this week, showing personal items alongside what prosecutors say are classified documents.

The photos, which had not been publicly released, were included in federal prosecutors’ exhibits that were submitted in a Monday court filing in the ongoing case against the former president that accuses him of illegally retaining classified documents after leaving the White House.

Prosecutors were responding to a motion filed by Trump attorneys to have the case dismissed on grounds that officials had mishandled classified evidence.

Prosecutors under special counsel Jack Smith made reference to the photos in the aforementioned filing, saying that they are evidence that backs up their arguments that the case should not be dismissed.

“Against this backdrop of the haphazard manner in which Trump chose to maintain his boxes, he now claims that the precise order of the items within the boxes when they left the White House was critical to his defense,” they wrote.

They also said that federal agents involved in the search “maintained the integrity of each container in which the evidence was found, that is, box-to-box integrity,“ adding that the FBI agents involved in the search ”did so professionally, thoroughly, and carefully under challenging circumstances.”

The former president, prosecutors said, “personally chose to keep documents containing some of the nation’s most highly guarded secrets in cardboard boxes along with a collection of other personally chosen keepsakes of various sizes and shapes from his presidency—newspapers, thank you notes, Christmas ornaments, magazines, clothing, and photographs of himself and others.”

What Trump Argued

Earlier this month, lawyers for the former president, in asking the case to be tossed by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, said that prosecutors had admitted that they did not preserve the exact copy of the contents of the boxes as they were discovered. They contended that investigators had destroyed evidence, meaning that the former president would have problems using the materials as evidence during his trial.

“The prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump,” they said in a bid to refute an argument from the special counsel’s office that said he was aware of the contents of the boxes in August 2022.

“The fact that the allegedly classified documents were buried in boxes and comingled with President Trump’s personal effects from his first term in office strongly supported the defense argument that he lacked knowledge and culpable criminal intent with respect to the documents at issue,” they added. “Any proximity between allegedly classified documents and other dated materials from years before the move, such as letters and newspapers, would have further strengthened this argument.”

The Trump team made reference to a May court filing by Mr. Smith that acknowledged they gave inaccurate information to Judge Cannon regarding the state of the boxes in question. In a footnote, prosecutors wrote that they were not sure whether the order of papers inside the boxes had been changed.

“The boxes contain items smaller than standard paper such as index cards, books, and stationary, which shift easily when the boxes are carried, especially because many of the boxes are not full,” their filing said.

A photo released by the Department of Justice on June 24, 2024, shows documents at the Mar-a-Lago property in Florida. (Department of Justice)

Judge Cannon has not set a hearing on the Trump claim that prosecutors spoiled evidence in how they handled the boxes of classified materials. Earlier this month, she postponed the trial date indefinitely and has yet to rule on several outstanding motions, reducing the likelihood of his trial occurring before the November election.

In the case, former President Trump faces 40 counts of illegally retaining classified materials after he left the White House in early 2021 and for allegedly obstructing attempts to retrieve them. He has pleaded not guilty. Two co-defendants in the case, his valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago manager Carlos de Oliveira, have also pleaded not guilty.