Trump Received Subpoena Ahead of F.B.I. Search - The New York Times

The Justice Department had sought the return of classified documents it believed might be at Mar-a-Lago before it sent F.B.I.

Trump received a subpoena this spring in search of documents that federal investigators believed he had failed to turn over earlier in the year, when he returned boxes of material he had improperly taken with him upon moving out of the White House, three people familiar with the matter said.

The existence of the subpoena helps to flesh out the sequence of events that led to the search of Mr.

agents seeking classified material they believed might still be there, even after efforts by the National Archives and the Justice Department to ensure that it had been returned.

The subpoena suggests that the Justice Department tried methods short of a search warrant to account for the material before taking the politically explosive step of sending F.B.I.

Two people briefed on the classified documents that investigators believe remained at Mar-a-Lago indicated that they were so sensitive in nature, and related to national security, that the Justice Department had to act.

Trump to make a case that the former president and his team were cooperating with the Justice Department in identifying and returning the documents in question and that the search was unjustified.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

The subpoena factored into a visit that Jay Bratt, the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, made with a small group of other federal officials to Mar-a-Lago weeks later, in early June, one of the people said.

Corcoran and told him to further secure the remaining documents, which were kept in the storage area with a stronger padlock, one of the people said.

Trump’s aides who had some visibility into how he stored and moved documents around the White House and who still worked for him, three people familiar with the events said?

Trump’s assistant in the outer Oval Office who also went to work for him at Mar-a-Lago, three people familiar with the outreach said.

Trump, with questions about the process for handling documents, according to a person familiar with the outreach.

Trump had not relinquished all the material that left the White House with him at the end of his term, according to three people familiar with the investigation.

The search warrant was broad, allowing the agents to investigate all areas of the club where classified materials might have been stored.

After hours of searching, they left with several boxes that were not filled to the brim and in some cases simply contained sealed envelopes of material that the agents took and were otherwise empty, one person familiar with the search said.

When archivists recovered 15 boxes this year, they discovered several pages of classified material and referred the matter to the Justice Department.

But others familiar with federal officials’ efforts to recover the documents have said that Mr