A new court filing from former President Donald Trump's attorneys reveals that FBI agents never searched what they describe as a "hidden room" at his Mar-a-Lago resort when they executed a search warrant there to retrieve top-secret documents back in 2022.
As reported by Law and Crime, the filing is making a discovery request for any internal government communications related to the search of Mar-a-Lago that reference this hidden room that the lawyers say was known to the government ahead of the search.
As Law and Crime tells it, Trump's lawyers believe this could undermine the prosecution's case on the grounds that it would provide an alternate explanation for why Trump ordered boxes of documents to be moved around other than trying to obstruct the government's search.
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"Despite its knowledge that the area existed — a number of witnesses were asked about it before the grand jury — and the fact that at the time of their search, President Trump’s bedroom was under construction and thus any boxes that had been left there would necessarily have been moved to permit the construction," the lawyers argued.
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They also seemed to argue that if the government truly believed the former president was engaged in a criminal conspiracy to hide documents, they would have searched this area as well as all the other areas where they did find several boxes of classified documents, which included secrets about other countries' nuclear weapons programs.
"That the FBI failed to search several areas of President Trump’s residence on August 8, 2022, where the boxes are alleged to have been hidden, is thus unequivocally material to President Trump as well as Messrs. Nauta and De Oliveira’s defense," wrote the attorneys.
"To that end, it is inconceivable that no communications exist concerning the FBI’s failure to search an area of President Trump’s residence on August 8."
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