The special counsel has questioned witnesses about a so-called "hidden room" inside Mar-a-Lago that wasn't searched by the FBI during their August 2022 raid, sources say.

The FBI missed the rooms in their search for classified documents, said sources.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s team has questioned several witnesses about a closet and a so-called “hidden room” inside former President Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago that the FBI didn’t check while searching the estate in August 2022, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

As described to ABC News, the line of questioning in several interviews ahead of Trump’s indictment last year on classified document charges suggests that – long after the FBI seized dozens of boxes and more than 100 documents marked classified from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate – Smith’s team was trying to determine if there might still be more classified documents there.

According to sources, some investigators involved in the case came to later believe that the closet, which was locked on the day of the search, should have been opened and checked.

As investigators would later learn, Trump allegedly had the closet’s lock changed while his attorney was in Mar-a-Lago’s basement, searching for classified documents in a storage room that he was told would have all such documents. Trump’s alleged efforts to conceal classified documents from both the FBI and his own attorney are a key part of Smith’s indictment against Trump in Florida.

  • octavio_dingus@lemmy.world
    85·
    10 months ago

    According to sources, some investigators involved in the case came to later believe that the closet, which was locked on the day of the search, should have been opened and checked.

    Uh, no shit.

  • Hereforpron2@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    56·
    10 months ago

    Seems to me like the one locked door and the literal hiding room would be the two most important places to look. How did they ever consider the search done without going in these two rooms?

    • brothershamus@kbin.social
      291·
      10 months ago

      Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor and former national security official in the Justice Department, called the FBI’s alleged failure to search the closet “a bit astonishing.”

      “You’re searching a former president’s house. You [should] get it right the first time,” Strauss told ABC News.

      The FBI fucked up so royally during Trumps junta on every single issue, I wonder if they’re not just floor-to-ceiling republiQans but droolingly incompetent.

      • OldWoodFrame
        10·
        10 months ago

        Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        32·
        10 months ago

        The FBI is engaged in their largest all-time case going after the insurrectionists. I’d hardly call them sympathetic to Trump.

    • Kbobabob@lemmy.world
      21·
      10 months ago

      How did they ever consider the search done without going in these two rooms?

      Some of those that work forces…

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
    351·
    10 months ago

    Changing the locks during a search has to be some kind of crime, wtf?

    • Contramuffin@lemmy.world
      15·
      10 months ago

      I think it wasn’t during the search. When Trump was initially told to return the documents, he lied to his lawyer that they were all in the basement. The lawyer, thinking that Trump is capable of telling the truth, checks the basement and reports to the FBI that they’ll send the documents over. But the documents in the basement are only a small fraction of the documents, and meanwhile, Trump moves the other documents to hide them. It seems this was also the time when he changed the locks

      • Grimy@lemmy.world
        11·
        10 months ago

        You are right, I completely miss read that. That makes a lot more sense.

  • tacosanonymous
    121·
    10 months ago

    Seems like further proof that they didn’t comply. Though, I guess as long as they can’t prove he has more docs, it’s really just proof of the FBI’s incompetence.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
      41·
      10 months ago

      Why outright show the world that you’re corrupt when you can just delay proceedings until Supreme Orange dismisses the case against himself, himself?

  • Tremble@sh.itjust.works
    52·
    10 months ago

    Well trump is protected by secret service. I’m pretty sure “we” know everything about him.