According to court documents, the FBI utilized props during their raid on Mar-a-Lago, the former President Donald Trump’s property, to gather classified documents. These props included cover sheets labeled “top secret” which were used as placeholders. However, it has been revealed that the seized documents are now disorganized, as acknowledged by both Trump’s defense attorney and the special counsel.
The photo of the alleged crime scene, featuring the classified documents with the prominent “classification” cover sheets, gained widespread attention and was extensively covered by the media. This led to speculations that Trump had been storing classified materials at his Florida property.
“[If] the investigative team found a document with classification markings, it removed the document, segregated it, and replaced it with a placeholder sheet. The investigative team used classified cover sheets for that purpose,” Bratt wrote in a recent filing.
In a filing submitted in May, Waltine Nauta, the defense attorney for Trump, stated that the markers used by the FBI to designate classified documents in piles were improperly positioned.
“Following defense counsel’s review of the physical boxes…and the documents produced in classified discovery, defense counsel has learned that the cross-reference provided by the Special Counsel’s Office does not contain accurate information,” Nauta wrote, according to Kelly.
DOJ and the media have lied about the infamous photo of alleged classified documents seized during FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
New court filings prove the FBI used cover sheets depicted in the photo during the raid.
That's not how the records were found:https://t.co/f0m2Zcvj0D
— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 6, 2024
“[Thirteen] boxes or containers contained documents with classification markings, and in all, over one hundred unique documents with classification markings…were seized. Certain of the documents had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status. (Emphasis added.) See, e.g., Attachment F (redacted FBI photograph of certain documents and classified cover sheets recovered from a container in the ‘45 office’),” Bratt wrote in an August 2022 court filing.
Kelly states that Bratt’s initial submission failed to clarify the origin of the classified document sheets, although he later confessed that the sheets were indeed brought to the location by FBI agents.
“In other words, in their zeal to stage a phony photo using official classified cover sheets, FBI agents might have failed to accurately match the placeholder sheet with the appropriate document. This is a potentially case-blowing mistake, particularly if the document in question is one of the 34 records that represents the basis of espionage charges against Trump,” Kelly reported.
Bratt acknowledged in a court document that the placeholders had been rearranged by Nauta, and not all of them had been correctly matched with the appropriate placeholder sheet. “In many but not all instances, the FBI was able to determine which document with classification markings corresponded to a particular placeholder sheet,” Bratt wrote.
Trump faces charges for mishandling classified documents, while President Joe Biden underwent investigation by a special counsel regarding his handling of similar documents. Although the FBI confiscated documents from Biden’s Delaware residence, a photo of the raid depicted the president’s documents neatly organized in boxes, rather than scattered with “top secret” labels.
