The New York Times reports that the FBI and the National Archives have recovered more than 300 documents marked “classified” from Donald Trump from the time Trump left the White House in January 2021 through the seizure of documents at Mar-a-Lago last week.

In the initial group of 15 boxes recovered by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago in January, the National Archives identified 150 documents with classified markings on them.  Trump’s lawyers reportedly handed more over around the time of a June subpoena, and more documents were recovered by an FBI search team last week.

The fact that the FBI found additional documents–from routine administration papers to highly classified documents marked TS/SCI–demonstrates to people with knowledge of the recovery effort that either Trump was hiding the documents or that Trump and his team did not have a grasp on the amount of classified information they had taken from the White House and stored at Mar-a-Lago.  Either option would be a violation of the Espionage Act:  duplicity or carelessness.

According to people knowledgeable about the situation, Trump personally went through the contents of the first 15 boxes identified before they were turned over to the federal government.  It’s unknown if he removed any items before the boxes were returned.

Section 793 of the Espionage Act declares it a crime to illegally possess or distribute any document relating to the national defense.  It also specifies a violation of the Act if “through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed.”