Lawsuits, legal delaying tactics, and claims of persecution are standard Donald Trump moves. Nothing has changed since he left office.
Maggie Haberman, Jodi Kantor, et al. reveal that in the first tranche of documents the National Archives reclaimed from the former president’s Palm Beach club included over 150 classified documents. Their presence “in the wild” triggered Department of Justice concerns and a criminal investigation that led to an F.B.I. search for more. Government officials recovered more than 300 documents from Mar-a-Lago: And the extent to which such a large number of highly sensitive documents remained at Mar-a-Lago for months, even as the department sought the return of all material that should have been left in government custody when Mr. Trump left office, suggested to officials that the former president or his aides had been cavalier in handling it, not fully forthcoming with investigators, or both.
The specific nature of the sensitive material that Mr. Trump took from the White House remains unclear. But the 15 boxes Mr. Trump turned over to the archives in January, nearly a year after he left office, included documents from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and the F.B.I. spanning a variety of topics of national security interest, a person briefed on the matter said.
Mr. Trump went through the boxes himself in late 2021, according to multiple people briefed on his efforts, before turning them over.
