Trump got his passports back, but they were in FBI possession for about two weeks.
For good reason. They weren’t just randomly seized with other papers. FBI agents found classified documents intermingled with newspapers and magazines, but didn’t take those, based on what’s been reported. They did take his passports.
Why? In a court filing on Tuesday, August 30, 2022, the Department of Justice revealed why: “The Department of Justice explained that the passports were seized by the FBI as they were held in a desk drawer in Trump’s office which also included classified documents, and therefore within the scope of the search warrant and relevant to the investigation.”
A reporter explained that “by seizing Trump’s passports and cataloguing that they were in the same drawer as classified information, the Justice Department now has clear evidence that Trump himself must have been reviewing and holding onto these documents personally — as opposed to his staffers or lawyers doing so.”
Here, I’ll offer an analogy of my own to help further explain why Trump’s passports are evidence and what they prove.
Suppose police raid your home pursuant to a search warrant for stolen jewelry, and find it in a drawer mixed with your personal jewelry. What that shows is you personally — as opposed to a member of your household — were in possession of the stolen items. At the very least, it would make it very difficult for you to persuade a jury that you had no knowledge of it.
In Trump’s case, the fact FBI agents found classified documents in his personal desk drawer, mixed with his passport and other personal items, suggests he was reading them and actively using their contents for personal purposes long after he ceased to have any official authority or reason to access that material. That could potentially support more serious charges than if he had just improperly taken and stored them.
Read story here.