Donald Trump had a significant amount of classified information with highly sensitive intelligence secreted in the basement storage room of his Mar-a-Lago vacation residence and supper club, the affidavit supporting the search warrant of the property shows, startling people at both the National Archives and the Department of Justice.  A timeline of the events relating to the search warrant is at the end of this story.

After the National Archives and Records Administration requested an FBI review of the 15 boxes of material it received from Donald Trump and his lawyers in January 2022, the FBI undertook the review over three days in May, finding “184 unique documents bearing classification markings, including 67 documents marked as CONFIDENTIAL, 92 documents marked as SECRET, and 25 documents marked as TOP SECRET.”

Among those documents were some marked with further classification categories:  HCS, “SCI [Secret Compartmented Information] control system designed to protect intelligence information derived from clandestine human sources”; FISA, information collected under a warrant authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; NOFORN, “information that may not be released in any form to foreign governments, foreign nationals, foreign organizations, or non-U.S. citizens without permission of the originator”; ORCON, or “Originator Controlled” information that can only be declassified with the approval of the agency that originally classified it; and SI, for “Special Intelligence,” to protect technical and intelligence information derived from the monitoring of foreign communications signals.

The affidavit lays out the case that federal agents had reached the end of their rope in trying to reacquire government documents from Trump, an effort that started in May 2021 and did not end until a search warrant was executed earlier this month.

While the affidavit is fairly straightforward–although it contains roughly 17 pages of redacted information in its 38 pages–it still contains some jaw-dropping information, like the fact that Trump had “HumInt,” or human intelligence, information gleaned through the use of individuals working on behalf of the US to dig up foreign secrets and hand them to American intelligence agencies.  These individuals are in dangerous situations that could result in their deaths if a foreign government discovers their identities.

Additionally, the affidavit includes a letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran in which he specifically states that Trump did not know the contents of many of the documents discovered at Mar-a-Lago:  “There have been public reports about an investigation by DOJ into Presidential Records purportedly marked as classified among materials that were once in the White House and unknowingly included among the boxes brought to Mar-a-Lago by the movers,” Corcoran writes in a May 25th letter to the DOJ’s National Security Division, apparently claiming Trump was unaware so much classified information was in his possession.  This claim is challenged by a letter, released by one of Trump’s liaisons to the National Archives John Solomon, which describes a letter Corcoran sent to the Archivist on April 29th outlining that Trump himself was reviewing documents before they were returned to the Archives.

Corcoran’s letter also attempts to claim, erroneously, that a former president has the same rights and privileges regarding the handling of classified documents as a sitting president:  “Any attempt to impose criminal liability on a President or former President that involves his actions with respect to documents marked classified would implicate grave constitutional separation-of-powers issues.”  The argument is dumb:  The three government entities involved in this–the Office of the President, the National Archives and the Department of Justice–are all part of the Executive Branch, making a “separation-of-powers” argument moot.  Also, former presidents have no special privileges relating to the handling of classified documents than any other citizens do:  they can’t do it without having proper authority and clearance.

To help put things in a clearer perspective, here is a timeline of some key events in the Trump document scandal as laid out in the affidavit and through the public record: