The U.S. Justice Department sought a search warrant of former President Donald Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely moved around and concealed and that Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department Tuesday.
The filing, which came in response to Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago, paints the clearest picture yet of the department’s exhaustive effort to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8.
Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks located inside Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.