Dark clouds over Mar-a-Lago as Trump returns to Florida to appear in court

There were dark thunderclouds on Monday over Mar-a-Lago near West Palm Beach as former US president Donald Trump returned to Florida to face criminal charges.

As the rain beat down on his 20-acre waterfront Florida property, a few police patrol cars and a couple of camera crews waited outside.

Trump himself headed not to Mar-a-Lago but to his golf hotel, the National Doral, close to Miami.

His supporters began gathering at this resort before lunchtime. Some chanted “We love Trump” as they waited.

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One Trump supporter warned in a video on social media that the indictment of the former president could lead to serious trouble that would make the January 6th riots at the US Capitol in Washington “like a playground”.

“We are ready. All we need is an order.”

Trump is scheduled to appear in a Miami court on Tuesday afternoon where he is facing 37 charges, mainly relating to his handling of classified document.

But it is at Mar-a-Lago, about 115km north of Miami, that the bulk of the allegations against the former president are set.

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Mar-a-Lago, a 10-minute drive from West Palm Beach, across a causeway, has 25 guest rooms, two ballrooms, a spa, a gift store, exercise facilities and an outdoor pool and patio.

It is to here that Trump is alleged to have brought from the White House boxes which, in addition to mementos, held a significant number of highly classified files.

These include top secret documents on the US nuclear programmes as well the country’s vulnerabilities to attack and plans for retaliation.

But Mar-a-Lago is not just Trump’s residence. Primarily it is a club for fee-paying members. And it is this that heightened the security concerns.

Trump’s indictment says between January 2021 and August 2022, the club – which describes itself as “the epicentre of the social scene in Palm Beach” – hosted more than 150 social events, including weddings, film premieres and fundraisers, that together drew tens of thousands of guests. It also has about 150 staff.

For the federal government, that meant a lot of people moving about not too far from where some of the country’s most sensitive secrets were stored in cardboard boxes.

Trump has argued that Mar-a-Lago is “a fort” and that the secret service personnel are present at all times. However, prosecutors contend that the role of the secret service is to protect Trump and his family, not his boxes.

The indictment claims Trump stored the boxes containing classified documents in locations at Mar-a-Lago including in a ballroom, a bathroom and shower, an office space, his bedroom and a storage room. It also says the hallway leading to the storage room could be reached from multiple outside entrances, including one accessible from the pool patio through a doorway that was often kept open.

In essence, prosecutors maintain that once Trump left the White House it was neither appropriate nor safe for classified material to be stored or even discussed at Mar-a-Lago.

Access to the club does not come cheap.

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Membership reportedly requires an initial payment of up to $200,000. On top of this, there is an annual fee of about $16,000 including a minimum requirement to spend about $2,000 on food.

However, some in the national security world believe foreign intelligence agencies would have been happy to pay to have access to the premises.

Long before the issue of classified documents, there were security concerns raised about Mar-a-Lago.

In February 2017, members of a House of Representatives watchdog committee wanted the White House to explain reports that Trump had discussed North Korean ballistic missile tests in view of guests at his club.

Photos taken by guests in the club’s public dining area showed Trump and then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe conferring and looking at documents while surrounded by their aides.

“Reports and social media accounts have suggested White House staff used their own cell phones to provide illumination for reviewing documents,” the letter from the head of the House of Representatives oversight committee said. “Separately, one Mar-a-Lago guest posted to his Facebook page a photograph with a man described to be the holder of the ‘nuclear football’.”

After the FBI retrieved secret material from Mar-a-Lago last August, it did not take critics of Trump too long to hit out at potential dangers posed at the Florida estate.

The former head of the CIA, John Brennan, told broadcaster MSNBC: “I’m sure Mar-a-Lago was being targeted by Russian intelligence and other intelligence services over the course of the last 18 or 20 months, and if they were able to get individuals into that facility, and access those rooms where those documents were and made copies of those documents, that’s what they would do.”

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Peter Strzok, former FBI assistant director of counter intelligence, suggested the Chinese, Iranians or Cubans as well as the Russians would have been interested in gaining access to Mar-a-Lago.

Both men have had well-known confrontations with Trump. And there is no evidence of the property being infiltrated. However, there have been a couple of curious incidents at Mar-a-Lago in recent years.

In 2019, a Chinese businesswoman who unlawfully made her way into the resort with a purse full of electronics was sentenced to eight months in prison, although she was not charged with spying.

She carried a Faraday bag, which blocks electromagnetic signals and inside it were four mobile phones, a computer and an external hard drive. In her hotel, authorities found nine flash drives, five mobile phone SIM cards, a device used to detect hidden cameras and $8,000 in cash.

In another incident, in May 2021, a woman presenting herself as Anna de Rothschild and part of the European banking dynasty, managed to get into Mar-a-Lago and mingled with guests. She had a photo taken with Trump. She actually turned out to be a Russian-speaking immigrant from Ukraine.