Federal prosecutors had former President Donald Trump's Bedminster, New Jersey, club as a target for searching for classified documents very shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid, The Guardian reported Thursday.
Trump has been indicted on 37 federal charges, including 31 on the willful retention of alleged documents related to national security and his defense team has started to receive evidence to review before the trial tentatively set for Aug. 14.
Prosecutors had become quickly alarmed the documents might be at Bedminster, if not transported there from Mar-a-Lago, sources told The Guardian.
The indictment alleges Trump not only retained documents after departing the White House, but he also might have hid them when asked for them, refusing to return them to the government.
The alleged conversation to a book writer about military attack plans reportedly took place at Bedminster.
Prosecutors are charging Trump under the Espionage Act of 1917's willful retention of documents instead of the Presidential Records Act, which is a civil statute that sets precedent for how presidential records are turned over the Nation Archives and Records Administration.
A Justice Department official did not respond to The Guardian's request for comment on its report of the sources noting the concerns about documents at Bedminster.
The report noted the government sought to search all of Trump's properties for classified documents.
Boris Epshteyn and lawyer Chris Kise were advising Trump to be cautious about submitting to government requests, while lawyers Tim Parlatore and Jim Trusty were advising a more cooperative approach, according to The Guardian.
While the federal investigators did not necessarily want to share the specific locations with Trump's team — not knowing the extent of the properties that might be involved — the Bedminster location was one of particular interest early, the sources told the paper.
The subpoena for any classified-marked documents was issued to the Trump political offices registered at Mar-a-Lago and a building in Palm Beach, perhaps because of the Fifth Amendment act of production doctrine protecting an individual from turning over evidence, according to the report.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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