Trump to view classified documents case evidence at secure facility today, report says

Former president to conduct first known review of classified papers at centre of federal case against him

Donald Trump will review evidence shared by Jack Smith as part of the classified documents case the special counsel brought against the former president today at a special facility in Miami, according to a report.

Sources familiar with the matter told ABC News that Mr Trump and his attorneys will visit a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) in Miami on Tuesday to conduct a review of the highly classified materials at the heart of the investigation into the former president.

This will reportedly include those seized by the FBI during the search of Mr Trump’s Palm Beach home, Mar-a-Lago, in August 2022.

Mr Trump is accused of mishandling national security papers and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them after he left office in 2021.

The former president’s visit to the SCIF comes as US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee overseeing the case, is set to hold a hearing on Wednesday in Fort Pierce, Florida, concerning a request from Mr Trump to extend the deadlines in the case.

Judge Cannon paused any litigation involving the classified materials while she weighed the request.

In September, she issued a protective order over the materials about which the case revolves — including highly sensitive government documents — allowing for the special counsel to begin providing classified discovery materials to Mr Trump and his defence team to review at a SCIF.

Court filings state that the materials include “classified documents that had been stored at Mar-a-Lago as well as other classified material generated or obtained in the Government's investigation, including documents related to witness interviews such as reports and transcripts”.

In this handout photo provided by the US Department of Justice, stacks of boxes can be observed in a bathroom and shower in The Mar-a-Lago Club’s Lake Room at former US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida (US Justice Department/AFP via Ge)

Mr Trump is charged with 37 felony counts related to the mishandling of presidential records, including highly sensitive national defence information, since his departure from the White House in January 2021.

On 1 August 2023, Mr Trump was indicted on four counts in the federal probe led by Mr Smith into his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

He has so far insisted that he is “an innocent man” in angry statements and postings to Truth Social, alleging that he is the victim of “rabid wolves” and the “weaponisation” of the justice system by the “corrupt” Joe Biden administration, even as the indictment revealed photos of boxes of files stacked high in the glitzy ballrooms and bathrooms of his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.

Mr Trump’s trial date is set for 20 May 2024.