The White House announced that the FBI gave President Trump Friday the materials the agency grabbed at Margrago Estate in Florida in 2022.
Investigators say documents containing confidential materials are one of thousands of items in the search, and they form central evidence in criminal cases, accusing Mr. Trump of illegally taking office when he left the office after his first term and blocked the administration from trying to retrieve them.
But a judge unexpectedly filed charges last year, prosecutors abandoned their calls to restore them after Trump was re-elected in November. Jack Smith, a special counsel to the case, said at the time that the charges were dismissed because departmental policies prohibited the filing of lawsuits against the current president.
Mr. Trump repeatedly argued that despite the classification, he had legal rights to the document. After the case was dropped, the president and his allies said they would seek the return of the seized files.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said this happened Friday afternoon.
“The FBI brought his property back to the property retrieved in the illegal and illegal attacks,” Zhang said. “We took the boxes today and loaded them onto Air Force One.”
Mr. Zhang told reporters that the box of material taken from Mar-A-Lago was loaded onto Air Force One before the president set out for Mar-A-Lago on Friday night. Presidential adviser Alina Habba told reporters that the boxes include personal belongings of Mr. Trump and his family.
The president said in his statement that he wanted to make the material “part of President Trump's library.”
“The Justice Department just returned to Jack Smith to make such an important box, adding, “I absolutely did nothing wrong. ”
