WASHINGTON -- The FBI's search of former President Donald Trump's Florida club and residence last month turned up 48 empty folders marked as containing classified information, a newly disclosed court filing shows, raising the question of whether the government had fully recovered the documents or any remain missing.
The filing, a detailed list of items retrieved in the search, was unsealed Friday as part of the court fight over whether to appoint an independent arbiter to review the materials taken by federal agents when they descended Aug. 8 on Trump's estate, Mar-a-Lago.
Along with the empty folders with classified markings, the FBI discovered 40 more empty folders that said they contained sensitive documents the user should "return to staff secretary/military aide," according to the inventory. It also said that agents found seven documents marked as "top secret" in Trump's office and 11 more in a storage room.
The list and an accompanying court filing from the Justice Department did not say whether all the contents of the folders had been recovered. But the filing noted that the inquiry into Trump's handling of the documents remained "an active criminal investigation."
Meanwhile, in his sharpest critique of his former boss, former Attorney General William Barr said there is no reason classified documents should have been inside Trump's personal residence after he was no longer president.
The inventory also sheds further light on how documents marked as classified were stored haphazardly, mixed with everyday items.
Among the items found in one box: 30 news clippings dated from 2008-19, three articles of clothing or "gift items," one book, 11 government documents marked as confidential, 21 marked as secret and 255 government documents or photographs with no classification markings.
The inventory listed seven batches of materials taken by the FBI from Trump's personal office at Mar-a-Lago that contained government-owned documents and photographs, some marked with classification levels up to "top secret" and some that were not marked as classified. The list also included batches of government records that had been in 26 boxes or containers in a storage room at the compound.
In all, the list said, the FBI retrieved 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked as secret, 31 marked as confidential, and 11,179 government documents or photographs without classification markings.
A federal judge in Florida, Aileen Cannon, ordered the inventory list to be released during a hearing Thursday to determine whether to appoint an outside expert known as a special master to review the government records for any that could be privileged. Cannon said she would issue a written decision on the matter "in due course."
Trump appeared to acknowledge on social media this week that he knew that much of this material was at his estate, complaining about a photograph that the Justice Department released Tuesday night cataloging some of the evidence that had been recovered.
The photograph showed several folders with "top secret" markings and some files with classification markings visible. All the material was arrayed on a carpet near a placard labeled "2A," presumably to document what was in a box of that number before the FBI removed it from Mar-a-Lago.
A shorter inventory, released earlier, said Box 2A contained materials found in Trump's personal office. In a social media post, the former president declared that the folders had been kept in "cartons" rather than "sloppily" left on the floor, suggesting that he had been aware of the presence of the materials.
In May, after extended negotiations between the National Archives and Trump's lawyers failed to result in the return of any documents from Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department issued a grand jury subpoena for all materials marked as classified that remained there. In early June, two lawyers for Trump turned over some of the records while telling investigators that no others remained.
In the filing Friday, prosecutors noted that the Justice Department's review of the materials seized in August was only "a single investigative step" in an "active criminal investigation."
"The investigative team will continue to use and evaluate the seized materials as it takes further investigative steps, such as through additional witness interviews and grand jury practice," the filing said.
EXPANDED INVENTORY
The government released a less detailed inventory of the seized items three weeks ago, at the same time it unsealed the warrant used to search Mar-a-Lago. In a court filing this week, the Justice Department revealed that the FBI had found 13 boxes or containers with documents marked as classified, amounting to "over 100 unique documents with classification markings" at the estate.
Shortly after the detailed inventory was unsealed, a spokesperson for Trump, Taylor Budowich, denounced the government on Twitter.
"The new 'detailed' inventory list only further proves that this unprecedented and unnecessary raid of President Trump's home was not some surgical, confined search and retrieval that the Biden administration claims, it was a SMASH AND GRAB," he wrote.
The expanded inventory did not disclose the specific types of classification markings that were on the documents or give any hints about whether they contained information that could reveal confidential human sources or foreign intelligence surveillance abilities.
By contrast, a redacted version of the affidavit for the search warrant application listed specific classification markings that had been found on documents in 15 boxes of government files that the National Archives removed from Mar-a-Lago in January.
The discovery of files in the trove marked as classified led the archives to make a criminal referral to the Justice Department, prompting what initially began as an investigation into how classified documents were taken to Mar-a-Lago.
That inquiry expanded after the Justice Department retrieved additional documents marked as classified from Mar-a-Lago on June 3 in response to a subpoena. At that time, two lawyers for Trump told investigators that was all that remained.
The FBI, which obtained surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago and interviewed multiple witnesses, acquired what it said was evidence that additional classified documents were at the property and the government's efforts to retrieve them had been obstructed.
In obtaining a search warrant, the bureau described the possibility of three crimes as the basis of its investigation: the unauthorized retention of national security secrets, obstruction and concealing or destroying government documents. None require a document to have been deemed to be classified, despite Trump's repeated and unproven claims that he had declassified everything he took from the Oval Office.
At the hearing Thursday, the Justice Department said it had performed its own review and set aside more than 500 pages of records that could be protected by attorney-client privilege. But lawyers for the department contested Trump's request for a review of the materials based on executive privilege, which protects confidential executive branch communications from disclosure.
The lawyers argued that executive privilege could not be used by a former president to keep part of the executive branch, like the department itself, from reviewing government files as part of its official responsibilities.
Cannon was not entirely persuaded by that argument and left open the possibility that she would grant Trump a special master to conduct a wide-ranging review, encompassing both attorney-client and executive privilege.
BARR: 'INEXPLICABLE'
Barr's comments on Fox News -- one of the outlets Trump is known to watch closely -- represents an escalation of Barr's condemnation of his former boss's behavior. Barr faced a backlash from Trump after telling him there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
"No, I can't think of a legitimate reason why they could be taken out of government, away from the government, if they are classified," Barr said in an interview with Fox News which aired Friday. "People say this was unprecedented, but it's also unprecedented for a president to take all this classified information and put them in a country club, OK?"
Barr also dismissed the explanation advanced by Trump and his allies that the former president had declassified entire batches of the documents.
"If in fact he sort of stood over scores of boxes, not really knowing what was in them, and said 'I hereby declassify everything in here,' that would be such an abuse and show such recklessness that it's almost worst than taking the documents," Barr said.
"What people are missing," Barr told Fox News, is that documents, regardless of whether they were classified, "still belong to the government and go to the archives." The other documents that were seized, like news clippings, were, Barr said, "seizable under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held."
Barr also said the government had gone to extraordinary lengths to work cooperatively with Trump's team before entering his Florida home.
"They jawboned for a year. They were deceived on the voluntary actions taken," he said, referring to assertions made by Trump's lawyers that all necessary material had been handed over. Then the government "went and got a subpoena. They were deceived on that, they feel, and the record, the facts are starting to show that they were being jerked around."
"And so," Barr asked rhetorically, "how long do they wait?"
Though Barr also said "it is clearly foolish what happened, and inexplicable," he added that it was not clear whether the actions should be criminally prosecuted, considering, among other things, the documents were ultimately recovered.
Barr's denial of widespread voter fraud created a deep rift between the nation's top law enforcement officer and Trump and ultimately led Barr to abruptly leave the administration. Since then, Trump and his allies have attacked Barr for not doing more to overturn the election results.
Later, Barr gave damning testimony to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters who tried to stop the certification of the presidential election. Barr testified that Trump was "detached from reality" and obsessed with fantastical notions of voter fraud.
Information for this article was contributed by Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer of The New York Times and by Azi Paybarah of The Washington Post.