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As Justice Department officials haggled for months this year with former President Donald Trump’s lawyers and aides over the return of government documents at his Florida home, federal prosecutors became convinced that they were not being told the whole truth.
That conclusion helped set in motion a decision that would amount to an unparalleled test of the Justice Department’s credibility in a deeply polarized political environment: to seek a search warrant to enter Mar-a-Lago and retrieve what prosecutors suspected would be highly classified materials, beyond the hundreds of pages that Trump had already returned.
By the government’s account, that gamble paid off, with FBI agents carting off boxloads of sensitive material during the search three weeks ago, including some documents with top secret markings.
But the matter hardly ended there: What had started as an effort to retrieve national security documents has now been transformed into one of the most challenging, complicated and potentially explosive criminal investigations in recent memory, with tremendous implications for the Justice Department, Trump and public faith in government.
Attorney General Merrick Garland now faces the prospect of having to decide whether to file criminal charges against a former president and likely 2024 Republican candidate, a step without any historical parallel.
Remarkably, he may have to make this choice twice, depending on what evidence his investigators find in their separate, broad inquiry into Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and his involvement with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The department’s Jan. 6 investigation began as a search for the rioters who attacked the Capitol. But last fall, it expanded to include actions that occurred before the assault, such as the plan to submit slates of electors to Congress that falsely stated Trump had won in several key swing states.
This summer, prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington began to ask witnesses directly about any involvement Trump and members of his inner circle, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, had in efforts to reverse his election loss.
For all his efforts to distance the department from politics, Garland cannot escape the political repercussions of his decisions. How he handles Trump will surely define his tenure.
It is still unclear how either case will play out. Prosecutors working on the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified information are nowhere near making a recommendation to Garland, according to people with knowledge of the inquiry. Court filings describe the work as continuing, with the possibility of more witness interviews and other investigative steps to come.
So far, Garland has signaled that he is comfortable with owning all of the decisions related to Trump. He has resisted calls to appoint a special counsel to deal with investigations into the former president.
