Despite the redactions contained in the search warrant affidavit, there’s enough there to give us a better idea of the sequence of events in this saga to date.
The Timeline
By May 6, 2021, National Archives (NARA) officials began asking Trump and his representatives to return records that were supposed to have previously been transferred to NARA by Trump’s last day in office. Those requests went unanswered until December 2021, when Trump’s representatives informed NARA officials that 12 boxes were at Mar-a-Lago.
For reasons that remain classified (per pp. 14–16 being either largely or completely redacted), it appears that the number of boxes examined by the FBI in May 2022 was actually 15 versus the 12 originally reported by Trump’s representatives. Fourteen of the boxes contained a total of 184 classified documents, ranging from CONFIDENTIAL to TOP SECRET, including documents labeled “HCS”—intelligence community short-hand for HUMINT Control System. As the affidavit notes, “The HCS control system protects human intelligence-derived information and information relating to human intelligence activities, capabilities, techniques, processes, and procedures.” (p. 4)
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