According to a person familiar with the situation, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump has spoken with the FBI about a letter that he signed claiming that a "diligent search" had been done for sensitive data and that all of those papers had been returned to the government.
According to the person who insisted on anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, Christina Bobb admitted to federal investigators on Friday that she did not write the letter but that another Trump lawyer who claimed to have done so had asked her to sign it in her capacity as a designated custodian of Trump's records.
Investigators are interested in the procedure because, according to the Justice Department, the letter made false claims regarding the location and return of all sought-after classified records. Despite the fact that the letter and 38 papers with classification markings were shown to FBI and Justice Department representatives during a visit to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, investigators went back with a search warrant on August 8 and recovered nearly 100 more classified items.
The certified letter was given to investigators who went to Mar-a-Lago on June 3 to gather further classified material from the house, according to an August court document. Following the alleged discovery of more classified materials at the estate beyond those found in the 15 boxes retrieved in January by the National Archives and Records Administration, the Justice Department allegedly issued a subpoena for the records weeks earlier.
A meticulous examination of the boxes that were carried from the White House to Florida was undertaken in answer to the subpoena, according to the letter supplied for investigators, and "any and all responsive papers accompany this certification," it was claimed. The letter also stated that its assertions were true "based upon the information that has been presented to me," with the qualification that they were truthful.
The FBI received an envelope containing 38 documents with classification designations at the time, including top-secret. However, agents started to worry that they might not have gotten the entire cache of documents, so they came back two months later armed with a warrant.
According to the person, Bobb told the FBI that M. Evan Corcoran, one of Trump's attorneys, had actually written and prepared the letter, and that he had asked her to sign it on his behalf as the custodian of the records.
On Tuesday, Corcoran didn't respond right away to email or phone messages. Justice Department and FBI spokespeople declined to comment, and Bobb did not promptly return a phone message requesting comment.
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