As of: February 2, 2024, 12:19 p.m
By: Stefan Krieger
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Donald Trump is on trial for unlawful possession of national security documents.
A hidden room in his property raises questions.
Palm Beach - It's just one of the stories that brought former US President Donald Trump a lawsuit.
During a search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on August 8, 2022, the FBI confiscated 13,000 documents.
Around 100 of them were marked as classified information and some as “top secret”, which means they are subject to the highest level of secrecy.
Trump was therefore charged with unlawful possession of national security documents.
He is said to have illegally kept it when he left the White House and then lied to investigators about it.
Trump has pleaded not guilty.
The charges were later expanded.
The trial against the 77-year-old is scheduled to begin in Florida on May 20th.
Donald Trump during a New Year's Eve reception at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
© Evan Vucci/dpa
A locked closet in Trump's mansion
In advance of the trial, special counsel Jack Smith's team interviewed several witnesses about a closet and a "hidden room" in Trump's estate.
This is now reported by the news portal
ABC News
.
The spicy thing is that the FBI agents are said to have overlooked this room when executing the search warrant and therefore did not investigate it.
According to the interviews, some investigators working on the case realized long after the search that a closet that was locked on the day of the search should have been opened and checked.
This was obviously missed.
Trump had the lock replaced
As investigators later learned, Trump allegedly had the lock on the closet changed while his lawyer searched for classified information in a storage room in the basement of Mar-a-Lago.
All such documents were supposedly kept there.
Trump's efforts to hide classified information from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith's indictment of Trump in Florida.
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Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor and former national security official at the Justice Department, called the FBI's alleged failure to search the closet "a little astonishing."
“They are searching the home of a former president.
You [should] do it right the first time,” Strauss told
ABC News
.
FBI apparently overlooks a room in Trump's property
In addition to the closet, the FBI also did not search what authorities called a "hidden room" connected to Trump's bedroom, according to information obtained by
ABC News
.
Smith's investigators later learned that some of Trump's associates heard in the days after the search that the FBI had overlooked at least one room at Mar-a-Lago.
West Palm Beach: The Trump estate Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
© J. David Ake/dpa
It is not yet clear whether Trump ever stored classified documents in one of these rooms or whether Smith's team was considering seeking another search warrant for Mar-a-Lago.
Donald Trump's team has now also commented on the reports.
A spokesman for Trump's 2024 election campaign criticized President Joe Biden and the media on
ABC News
, saying the investigations against Trump were "just desperate attempts to influence the election to stop the presumptive Republican presidential nominee."
At least these allegations are not really new.
(skr)