Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has questioned several witnesses about a closet and so-called “hidden room” inside former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence that the FBI failed to search while searching the property in August 2022. sources familiar with the subject. with the matter told ABC News.
As described to ABC News, the line of questioning in several interviews before Trump’s impeachment last year on classified document charges suggests that, long after the FBI seized dozens of boxes and more than 100 documents marked classified from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, Smith’s team was trying to determine whether there might still be more classified documents there.
According to sources, some investigators involved in the case later came to believe that the closet, which was locked on the day of the search, should have been opened and searched.
As investigators would later learn, Trump allegedly had the closet lock changed while his lawyer was in the basement of Mar-a-Lago, searching for classified documents in a storage room that he was told would hold all of those documents. Trump’s alleged efforts to conceal classified documents from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith’s case against Trump in Florida.
Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor and former Justice Department national security official, called the FBI’s alleged failure to search the closet “a little surprising.”
“You’re searching a former president’s house. (You should) do it right the first time,” Strauss told ABC News.
In addition to the closet, the FBI also failed to search what authorities called a “hidden room” connected to Trump’s bedroom, the sources said.
Smith’s investigators were later told that in the days immediately following the search, some of Trump’s employees learned that the FBI had missed at least one room at Mar-a-Lago, the sources said.
According to a senior FBI official, agents focused on areas they believed might contain government documents.
“Based on information gathered during the course of the investigation, areas were identified and searched pursuant to the search warrant,” the official told ABC News.
A supporter of former President Donald Trump walks past his Mar-a-Lago property on August 8, 2022, in Palm Beach, Florida.
Wilfredo Lee/AP
Within months of the FBI’s search, federal prosecutors from the Justice Department pressured Trump’s legal team to ensure that no classified documents remained at any of Trump’s properties, but it is unclear whether those prosecutors or any Trump lawyers they knew the spaces not examined at that time.
It’s also unclear whether Trump ever kept any classified documents in any of those spaces, or whether Smith’s team ever considered seeking another court order to search Mar-a-Lago again.
In its questioning of witnesses, Smith’s team appeared to focus more on gaps missed in the three months before Trump was first charged in the case, sources said.
Contacted by ABC News, a Trump campaign spokesperson criticized President Joe Biden and the media, saying the investigations into Trump are “just desperate attempts at election interference… to stop the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.” .
‘Rigorous and professional’
Strauss, who served at the Justice Department from 2005 to 2016, said he was particularly surprised to hear about the FBI’s alleged inaction considering how “exceptionally thorough” he said they typically are and how meticulously they planned the search for Mar- a-Lago. of time.
Testifying before Congress last year, FBI Director Chris Wray noted that agents conducting the search even wore casual clothing at Mar-a-Lago, rather than the more common “bulletproof jackets,” so as not to knock too much attention.
Wray assured lawmakers that in such “sensitive” investigations, “our people try very hard to be rigorous (and) professional.”
But when agents reached the locked closet near the front of Trump’s residence, they couldn’t find a key and were told that the space behind the door (an old staircase converted into a closet with shelves) led nowhere, so that they decided not to break it, sources said
Sources also told ABC News that FBI agents did not do more in part because they felt they had been at Mar-a-Lago long enough. But the senior FBI official disputed that, saying, “Discussions regarding additional areas of the property took place that day and it was determined that the actions already taken met the parameters of the search warrant.”
“(The FBI) is almost known for its ruthlessness and compliance,” Strauss said.
At the time, the FBI was not aware that the lock change, at least in its opinion, could have potentially been significant, the sources said.
According to the indictment against Trump, after Trump received a federal subpoena demanding the return of all classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his lawyer, identified to ABC News as Evan Corcoran, was told to search for any documents that answered in boxes. stacked inside a storage room in the basement.
In this June 9, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump is shown at the White House in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images, FILE
But in the days before Corcoran arrived at Mar-a-Lago on June 2, 2022, Trump aide Walt Nauta, acting “on Trump’s orders,” moved more than 30 boxes from the warehouse to Corcoran’s residence. Trump, so the lawyer never even saw many of Trump’s boxes, according to the indictment.
Corcoran found 38 classified documents in the warehouse and turned them over to the FBI, but Trump claimed that “many documents in response to the (subpoena) could not be found,” the indictment alleges.
Through their investigation, Smith’s team discovered that while Corcoran was still in the storage room, Trump asked a former Mar-a-Lago employee to change the lock on the closet, sources said. For years, the closet lock was managed by the Secret Service, but on June 2, 2022, Trump had it changed and wanted the key, sources said.
A former maintenance worker described Trump’s request as unusual, according to sources.
Unlike the locked closet, the FBI didn’t even know the so-called “hidden room” existed until after they left Mar-a-Lago, sources said.
Although agents searched Trump’s bedroom, a small door in one of the walls was hidden behind a large dresser and a large television, sources said. The space behind the wall was the “hidden room,” which maintenance workers entered sporadically to access the cables running through it, sources said.
Strauss said it’s not uncommon for agents executing search warrants to miss a few things, especially when searching extensive properties.
However, the fact that witnesses said the FBI overlooked a “hidden room” inside Trump’s bedroom caught the attention of Smith’s team, according to sources.
‘Bathrooms and bedrooms’
A federal judge had approved the search of Mar-a-Lago, approving the FBI’s plan to search Trump’s office and “all warehouses and any other room or place where boxes or records may be stored.”
During their search, they allegedly found 27 classified documents in Trump’s office and 75 more in the basement storage room, where Corcoran had searched two months earlier and found a smaller set of other apparently classified documents, according to the indictment against Trump.
The FBI found no classified documents in any of Trump’s ballrooms, bathrooms or bedrooms, where he allegedly stored classified documents at times during the year and a half after leaving the White House.
During the summer of the FBI search, Trump lived primarily at his estate in Bedminster, New Jersey. The FBI did not search that property, they only searched Mar-a-Lago.
As ABC News previously reported, just months after the FBI search, the Justice Department suspected that Trump still had classified documents somewhere, so, under pressure from the department, one of Trump’s lawyers conducted another search. at Mar-a-Lago and other properties, and found a handful of more classified documents.
In testimony before Congress last year, Wray said that under “specific rules,” there are only certain places that can securely store classified information, “and in my experience, ballrooms, bathrooms, and bedrooms cannot.” are” among them.
“Our people in this case have proceeded honorably and in strict compliance with our policies, our rules and our best practices,” Wray added.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, insisting he did not break the law by keeping the documents later seized by the FBI. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Nauta, the assistant who allegedly helped move Trump’s boxes, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira have also been charged for their alleged role in the Trump conspiracy. Both have pleaded not guilty.