Because the public version of the Mar-a-Lago
search warrant affidavit is heavily redacted, it does not resolve lingering questions about the FBI's justification for searching former President Donald Trump's residence at his Palm Beach resort. But the document does shed some light on the circumstances that led to the August 8 search, during which the FBI
seized 11 sets of documents marked as classified, along with unclassified presidential records that belonged in the National Archives. The affidavit—which was unsealed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart, who approved the search warrant—also clarifies Trump's defense against possible criminal charges stemming from his retention of those documents.
According to the affidavit, which the Justice Department published today, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) first requested the return of missing presidential records on May 6, 2021, three and a half months after Trump left office. It "continued to make requests until approximately late December 2021," when "NARA was informed twelve boxes were found and ready for retrieval." Trump's representatives ultimately turned over 15 boxes in January, a year after President Joe Biden's inauguration.
On February 9, after NARA discovered that the boxes contained classified documents, it referred the matter to the Justice Department. NARA reported that the boxes contained "newspapers, magazines, printed news articles, photos, miscellaneous print-outs, notes, presidential correspondence, personal and post-presidential records, and 'a lot of classified records.'" It said "highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified."
From May 16 to May 18, "FBI agents conducted a preliminary review" of the 15 boxes. They found "184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET."
[...]
Finally, the unexpurgated affidavit might give us some clue as to the nature of the information that the FBI was trying to protect. We know that it found "scores of additional documents" (per the Times) with markings ranging from "confidential" to "top secret/SCI" (per the search inventory). Trump insists that, despite those labels, he had declassified all of the material that the FBI seized, which implies that he thought it posed no threat to national security. While it certainly would not be safe to trust Trump's judgment on that question (or pretty much anything else), the FBI has not publicly explained why it thought the danger was grave and imminent enough to justify a search that was bound to be enormously controversial.