Donald Trump Documents Unsealed: Five Key Bits of Evidence

Judge Aileen Cannon has unsealed a series of documents in Donald Trump's classified documents case in Florida.

The former president is charged with 40 federal crimes over his handling of sensitive material retrieved from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after he left the White House in January 2021. He is accused of obstructing efforts by federal authorities to return them. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The unsealing follows months of wrangling between prosecutor Jack Smith on one side and Trump's lawyers on the other.

Smith and his Department of Justice team wanted the documents censored so that witnesses are not identified. The sides reached an agreement on censorship and the documents were unsealed on Tuesday.

Newsweek sought email comment from Trump's attorney on Wednesday.

Here are some of the key points the unsealed documents reveal:

1. Trump Claimed He Couldn't Send North Korea Documents by FedEx

A set of emails disclosed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) reveal that Trump held highly sensitive documents about North Korea at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

When NARA requested them, Trump didn't send them, claiming that sending them by FedEx courier service was a security risk.

His lawyer claimed in an email to NARA that the lawyer was waiting to hear if someone should hand-deliver the documents from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.

"On the North Korea documents, I learned that they have not been sent yet because former President Trump had concerns with the security of sending the original documents by FedEx and that concern [and how to address it] was still bubbling back through the chain of communication."

The lawyer, whose name is censored in the unsealed documents, claimed this was the delay in handing over the North Korea documents, not Trump's attempts to stall the process.

The lawyer copied in someone from the Hueston Hennigan law firm, which was representing at least one senior Trump White House lawyer.

2. Trump Sent Ripped-Up Pieces of Paper to the National Archives

Trump officials had to tape together presidential records that Trump had ripped up. The taped-together records were then sent to the National Archives.

However, other presidential records were not taped together and were simply sent as ripped-up pieces of paper.

NARA initially didn't realize that the ripped-up pieces of paper were presidential records because they were included among intact presidential records sent by Trump.

The details of what occurred are included in a letter dated February 18, 2022, from senior NARA archivist David Ferriero to Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Reform.

"In June 2018, NARA learned from a press report in Politico that textual Presidential records were being torn up by former President Trump and that White House staff were attempting to tape them back together," the letter said. "NARA sent a letter to the Deputy Counsel to the President asking for information about the extent of the problem and how it is being addressed.

"The White House Counsel's Office indicated that they would address the matter. After the end of the Trump Administration, NARA learned that additional paper records that had been torn up by former President Trump were included in the records transferred to us. Although White House staff during the Trump Administration recovered and taped together some of the torn-up records, a number of other torn-up records that were transferred had not been reconstructed by the White House."

3. A Trump Employee Claimed the Former President Showed Off a Classified Map in His Private Plane

The FBI conducted an interview with an unnamed Trump official in Florida in May 2022.

The witness, who had seen old and new boxes stored in Trump's bedroom, was "nervous" while being interviewed by the FBI.

"Witness described hearing about a trip by airplane with FPOTUS [former president of the United States] over the summer of 2021," the agent reported by email to his FBI supervisors.

The flight was from Trump's country house in Bedminster, New Jersey. During the flight, Trump "allegedly held a classified map and described its contents to the passengers onboard."

The agent also noted that a NARA review team "has seen a similar document matching description." The FBI agent's email doesn't clarify whether the NARA team had seen a document that matched the witness's description or a document that matches the description of the map that Trump allegedly displayed.

The agent also thanked Florida FBI agents for facilitating the interview in Palm Beach and noted that "this is a beautiful place."

4. Trump Claimed the National Archives Was Monitoring His Exit From the White House "Like the FBI"

In a motion to Cannon, Trump's lawyers claimed that the National Archives was in collusion with the Biden administration in seeking to ensnare Trump for retaining presidential records.

They said that this led to NARA and a Biden administration official monitoring Trump's exit from the White House "like the FBI" in the hope of framing him.

They include details of correspondence between a Justice Department official and NARA that they said shows that they were colluding in the days after Trump left the White House in 2021.

5. National Archives Believed Trump Was Holding a Letter Left by President Obama

It has become a White House tradition for outgoing presidents to leave a good-luck letter in the White House for the incoming president.

Trump considered Obama's letter a personal memento and took it with him to Mar-a-Lago.

In correspondence, a NARA official explained to a senior Trump official that, as Trump received the letter after he became president, it was a presidential record, regardless of when Obama wrote it.

A Trump lawyer agreed to return the letter after an extensive correspondence. However, a Trump lawyer sought a delay of more than a week until Trump officials would be back in Mar-a-Lago to retrieve it.

"On the original letter from President Obama, the same relevant staff person believes that it will take about a week from next Friday that they will be in a position to send that, based on timing for staff to be back in Florida and to locate the letter within the body of materials where they believe it is located," the lawyer wrote.