pages that they usually have in the southern district of florida tell us the justice department believes they need to talk, they need to say some more about what the former president was alleging in his lawsuit against the government asking for the special master. there are a lot of things that the former president said in that filing, obviously a lot of it are his grievances about how the fbi in the justice department are biased against him. but some of it was about how cooperative he has been with this effort to get these documents back. so, i think you re gonna hear a little bit more about that in this filing. there is a lot of narrative that we still do not know about, beginning obviously in 2021 when the national archives first approached the trump team and ask them to please return these documents that belong to you and me and all americans. when you re looking for, george? well, i m going to be interested to see if they do contain more of a factual narrative that w
sensitive. officials say these were taken from mar-a-lago even after donald trump s team claimed they had handed over everything. i m john berman with brianna keilar. while you were hopefully sleeping the most comprehensive filing yet from the department of justice, explaining what they found at mar-a-lago, why they executed a search warrant. the government says it developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the storage room at mar-a-lago and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government s investigation. and when they searched the government seized twice as many documents marked classified as the trump team had given them when they claimed they handed over everything. the filing included this photo, documents that had yellow tabs, red tabs, you can see right there, marked secret, top secret, sensitive. these were taken from containers and they were spread out on the floor by the fbi. this is how the fbi chose to display them
look in the storage records and then they find these three files, three classified documents, in trump s desk drawer. so certainly laying out the case that this was justified. they also on this issue because this is really about whether a special master and third party can review these documents, they re saying these aren t trump s documents to review, they belong to the american people. there is no executive privilege. trump never asserted executive privilege at any point along the process until the search warrant was executed. they re saying that, you know, to permit a special master to get involved at this point could cause unnecessary significant harm because there s also a you have the intelligence agencies to see what was in these documents and whether there is any potential harm to sources and methods. thank you for helping us just begin to understand what s in here. a lot that we did not know yesterday at this time. thank you so much. and joining us now is cnn
flint, michigan. up first just before midnight justice department legal filing and what it tells us about the case against donald trump. the 36-page filing is full of critical new details. they include three classified documents in desks inside the former president s office. more than 100 documents in 13 boxes with classification markings inside the former president s residence. some of those documents so secret the fbi and d orkoj persl charged with reviewing them needed to get additional security clearances. the filing includes this stunning photograph, a smattering of highly classified documents with unmistakably clear, top secret and sci markings laid out on a mar-a-lago carpet next to a time of framed magazine covers and this, too, justice department lawyers now allege mr. trump and his attorneys likely committed a crime by obstructing a federal investigation. stopping fbi agents from looking through boxes of records and in one instance, signing off on a sworn statemen
than 300 classified documents were found at mar-a-lago since trump left office, and not all of them in that unsecured storage room. the doj says three classified documents were found in trump s desk drawer. and as one former top fbi official put it, the new information obliterates claims that trump and his lawyers have been cooperating and negotiating in good faith to return the records. the doj response raises the stakes for the courtroom tomorrow. a judge holds a hearing on whether to appoint the special master, neutral third party to oversee the handling of the seized documents. the justice department opposes it and says a special master is unnecessary, and would significantly harm important governmental interesting, including national security interests. in the filing, the justice department also released this photo of some of the evidence found in the august search. you see the documents here to spread out on the floor by the fbi with some of the highest classifica