The FBI recently admitted to turning off security cameras and adding cover sheets to documents during the 2022 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. This revelation came to light through a court filing from Special Counsel Jack Smith in response to Trump’s motion to dismiss the case due to alleged evidence tampering.
According to the filing, at approximately 9:55 a.m. on the day of the raid, FBI agents requested that the CCTV servers be turned off for about 25 minutes due to concerns for agent safety. Despite the cameras being turned off, a live feed was still displayed, and some Trump Organization personnel monitored it. Recording resumed at 10:20 a.m., following the direction of Trump’s attorneys.
During the raid, FBI agents set up a workstation outside a storage room to review and sort through the boxes pulled from the estate. If a document bearing classified markings was found, agents removed it, recorded the box it was found in, and replaced it with an “initial placeholder sheet.” The FBI initially used preprinted classified cover sheets, but after running out, they began using blank sheets with handwritten annotations to identify the documents.
In Trump’s office, agents discovered various items, including newspaper clippings, magazines, and empty folders in a blue box. Among these were loose cover sheets for classified information and documents marked classified. An FBI agent found no potentially privileged materials in the box but did find classified documents. The Case Team agents reviewed the box and seized documents marked classified, inserting placeholder sheets where the seized documents were found.
Trump’s attorneys argue that the FBI’s actions, including turning off the cameras and the way they handled the documents, constitute spoliation of evidence and a violation of due process:
“The prosecution team destroyed exculpatory evidence supporting one of the most basic defenses available to President Trump in response to the politically motivated charges in this case. The Special Counsel’s Office has wrongfully alleged that President Trump was aware of the contents of boxes in August 2022, where those boxes were packed by others in the White House and moved to Florida in January 2021. The fact that the allegedly classified documents were buried in boxes and commingled with President Trump’s personal effects from his first term in office strongly supported the defense argument that he lacked knowledge and culpable criminal intent with respect to the documents at issue. Any proximity between allegedly classified documents and other dated materials from years before the move, such as letters and newspapers, would have further strengthened this argument.”
“The prosecution team’s instructions to agents who executed the raid essentially acknowledged these propositions, and directed the agents to take care to document the location of both seized items and potentially privileged materials. However, the agents disregarded those instructions. The government was more interested in staging—and leaking—manipulated photographs to the press than preserving key exculpatory evidence that has now been lost forever.”
The legal proceedings surrounding the Mar-a-Lago raid continue to draw significant attention, reflecting broader concerns about the handling of classified information and the conduct of federal investigations involving high-profile figures. As the case progresses, the implications of the FBI’s actions during the raid will be closely scrutinized.
