featured-image

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — Special counsel Jack Smith revealed new photos in a court filing Monday evening that depict how haphazardly Donald Trump stored classified materials at his Florida property post-presidency, with golf shirts stuffed into boxes alongside the sensitive materials, newspaper clippings and other mementos. The images — a grab-bag of national security secrets, souvenirs and various odds-and-ends — are part of prosecutors’ effort to show that the dozens of boxes containing government materials at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club were so messy and disorganized that investigators could not preserve the precise order of the contents they retrieved.

The Justice Department has released photos of the classified documents before, but the new filing offers the largest number of such images. In one, a sensitive document with redactions sits in a box atop of an edition of The Washington Post with a front-page story describing Trump’s difficult relationship with the FBI. Next to that box sit two cases of Diet Coke bottles.



Smith filed the photos in response to an argument from Trump that the criminal charges against him should be dismissed because investigators messed up the precise order of the boxes’ contents. Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican nominee in this year’s election, faces 40 counts of willfully retaining classified information and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them, serious national-security vi.

Back to Beauty Page