Justice Department officials want to know why a box containing classified records was found at former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate late last year, well after federal agents and Trump aides conducted searches, CNN reported.
Trump's legal team has acknowledged that it turned over to the special counsel the box, which contained a handful of classified records scattered among copies of presidential schedules, and a laptop containing its scanned contents.
Prosecutors want to know why the box, found in December, wasn't given to the Justice Department earlier, and also whether Trump knew about its movements, CNN reported.
The classified documents in the box were discovered after DOJ told Trump's legal team to conduct another search for documents at Trump's Florida home.
Special counsel Jack Smith's team questioned a Trump aide who copied classified materials found in the box using her phone to put them onto a laptop.
The aide voluntarily spoke to the investigators.
Prosecutors then subpoenaed the password to the laptop, which she provided, a CNN source said.
"When the team found the box, it was initially believed that the FBI had simply missed it during the search warrant," a source told CNN. "But upon further investigation, the legal team discovered that an aide had moved it as part of her job function."
The media outlet said that people familiar with the Trump legal team's efforts to locate documents describe "a confusing chain of events that delayed discovery of the box."
CNN reported the box's contents were uploaded to the cloud, emailed to a Trump employee, and moved off Mar-a-Lago before returning to the estate's bridal suite that now is Trump's office, which FBI agents previously had searched.
The handling of the box, as well as the former president's daily movements and instructions to his team, have been a focus of Smith's investigation, sources told CNN
One person told CNN that federal investigators suspect the box's movements was a "shell game with classified documents."
Trump attorney Tim Parlatore told CNN earlier this month that the aide had not seen the classified markings.
"After we did the search in December and found within this box of thousands that there were a couple of pages that had a little marking at the bottom, which we turned over, after that, we found out that she had scanned the box so that it would be digitized," Parlatore said.
"She had no idea that there was any classification markings on anything. And as soon as we found out about that, we called up the DOJ to let them know and immediately provided them access to it."
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