Trump was likely behind a false statement to the DOJ about secret documents being held at Mar-a-Lago, legal analysts say

• New information from the affidavit used in the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search was revealed Tuesday.
• Legal analysts said it suggested Trump approved a false statement by his lawyer.

New details from the affidavit used in the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago suggest that former President Donald Trump may have authorized a false statement his attorneys made to the DOJ, legal analysts said.

Experts zeroed in on a statement in the affidavit an attorney for Trump gave to investigators when they visited Mar-a-Lago to retrieve government records in June.

The details had previously been redacted, but were made public Tuesday on the order of a federal magistrate.

Investigators believe that Trump may have violated laws including the Espionage Act in holding onto the records, and also that Trump and his aides may have obstructed their investigation.

—The Recount (@therecount) September 13, 2022

According to the newly-released information, one Trump attorney told the DOJ "he was not advised there were any records in any private office space or other locations in Mar-a-Lago."

A lawyer for Trump, Christina Bobb, also signed a statement saying that all of the information requested by the government had been handed back.

That information turned out to be false. When agents executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, they found stashes of highly confidential records, including in Trump's offices, haphazardly kept alongside his personal items.

Analysts say the new evidence indicates Trump himself was likely behind the attorneys false claims.

"There's more of an implication in this newly released information that the former president did play a role in the provision of information about documents to whoever the lawyer who certified this information to the Justice Department," Former US attorney Joyce Vance said in an interview on MSNBC.

"There's this implication that documents were stored in storage areas and that there was nothing in personal offices and that seems like the sort of information that would have been very likely to come from the former president."

—Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) September 13, 2022

David Laufman, the former Former Chief of DOJ's Counterintelligence Section, also said that Trump had likely fed his attorneys false information.

"I think it's more likely than not that he lied to them knowing that they were going to transmit those lies to the government," he said on MSNBC.

On Twitter, legal analyst Ryan Goodman reached the same conclusion.

"Most likely points to ... being advised by his client, Donald Trump," he said of the attorney's claim to investigators.

Representatives for Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider.

The judge released additional information on Tuesday on the basis that Trump's lawyers had disclosed some of it in their court filings so there was no sense in that section remaining under wraps, the Associated Press reported.

Portions of the affidavit were made public last month, but it was heavily redacted after DOJ lawyers argued that releasing all of the information could compromise their investigation.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to his possession of the records, claiming that they were broadly declassified before leaving office and that many are shielded under executive privilege rules.

But Trump's lawyers have notably not made that argument in any legal filings.

Legal analysts say that in any case, Trump would've had no right to retain many of the documents after leaving office regardless of their classification status.

Trump and the DOJ are currently engaged in a legal tussle over a judge's order appointing an independent official known as a special master to review the records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago by the FBI.