TIMELINE: How Trump sought to obstruct FBI search of top secret documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago

 It started as a simple request from the sleepy National Archives — and ballooned into one of the worst legal threats facing former President Donald Trump.

Nearly 18 months after the twice-impeached president left office on Jan. 20, 2021, the FBI executed a search warrant on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 8, after numerous attempts were made to retrieve boxes of confidential White House papers belonging to the National Archives.

Now, Trump faces a wide-ranging criminal probe involving potential violations of the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice. Although no charges have been filed, legal eagles suspect a possible indictment is looming over the 45th president and his legacy.

Former President Donald Trump departs Trump Tower, Aug. 10, 2022, in New York, on his way to the New York attorney general's office for a deposition in civil investigation. (Julia Nikhinson/AP)

Here’s a look at key dates and actions in the saga:

January 20, 2021 Trump leaves the White House for his Florida estate at the end of his four-year term and refuses to attend President Biden’s inauguration, putting him in the same company as Presidents John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson (the first one to be impeached).

[ House impeaches Trump for unprecedented second time over deadly Capitol attack ]

Instead of handing over all documents to the National Archives, Trump orders some shipped to his resort home, Mar-a-Lago.

An aerial view of former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is seen near dusk on Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. (Steve Helber/AP)

May 2021: The National Archives and Records Administration asks Trump to return documents that he took with him or kept when he left office, noting that “things can be very chaotic.”

December 2021: After resisting the requests for months, Trump lawyers agree to hand over documents, which they characterize as mementos, such as his infamous “love letters” with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.

Jan. 17. A National Archives contractor arrives at Mar-a-Lago to collect the documents, including 15 boxes filled with top-secret classified documents and records, including the Kim letters and a handwritten letter President Barack Obama left for Trump when he assumed office.

Alarmed by what it discovered, the National Archives requests the FBI to examine the documents. Agents find 184 classified documents in that initial batch. A criminal probe is later opened into possible mishandling of classified docs.

Pages from a Department of Justice court filing on Aug. 30, 2022, in response to a request from the legal team of former President Donald Trump for a special master to review the documents seized during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, are photographed early Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2022. (Jon Elswick/AP)

May 11: Investigators discover that Trump had not handed over all remaining documents being held at Mar-a-Lago. They obtain a subpoena for the return of all remaining documents in his possession, and later one for security footage of the lightly guarded location.

June 3: Prosecutors visit Mar-a-Lago to collect documents covered by the subpoena personally. Trump lawyers hand over some documents. They refuse to allow government officials to check boxes in the storage room for more classified documents.

One of Trump’s lawyers provides a written statement that no documents marked classified remained at Mar-a-Lago. That statement later turned out to be false.

June 8: Prosecutors warn Trump’s team to enhance security at the basement storeroom, after which a padlock is placed on the door.

June 8-22: FBI interviews Trump’s “personal and household staff members.” One or more of the witnesses tells the feds that Trump was still hanging on to more documents.

Aug. 5: Judge Bruce Reinhart grants the FBI’s request for a search warrant for some parts of Mar-a-Lago, including the storage room and Trump’s office. It’s the first time such a search has been ordered for a former president’s home.

[ Trump reveals search of Mar-a-Lago estate in top-secret document search ]

Aug. 8: FBI executes the search warrant while Trump’s attorneys were watching, collecting many more boxes stuffed with documents. The feds tried to keep the search low key, but Trump reveals the search on social media, denouncing it as a part of a partisan witch hunt.

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks at the Justice Department, Aug. 11, 2022, in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Aug. 11: U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland agrees to allow the release of the search warrant showing details of what agents were looking for and an inventory of what was taken.

The search turned up more than 100 confidential documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings, including some at the most restrictive levels. At least three such documents were found in the former president’s desk, prosecutors say.

Aug 22: Trump’s lawyers ask U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master to comb through the seized documents to separate any that might be covered by attorney-client or executive privilege. Prosecutors say a filter team of lawyers has already found a small number of items potentially covered by privilege.

Aug. 26: Judge Reinhart orders the release of a heavily redacted affidavit from a FBI special agent that convinced him to grant the search warrant. Much of it is blacked out, but the portions that are not shed more light on the documents used to obtain the search warrant.

Aug. 30: Department of Justice says that “government records were likely concealed and removed” at Mar-a-Lago, significantly ramping up the legal peril for Trump. It also objects to Trump’s demand for a special master, noting that he waited too long to file and should have approached Reinhart.

Aug. 31: Justice Department likely to wait until after the midterm elections on Nov. 8 to announce any possible charges against Trump, as first reported by Bloomberg News.

DOJ points to likely obstruction in investigation of documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

 Republican candidates for elected office who are not in deep red districts have been taking references to Trump (and to abortion restrictions) off their websites. 

The deadly seriousness of what he has done is clear in part from the former president’s own behavior over it. Yesterday, he demanded to be made president or to have a do-over of the 2020 election; today, after constant reposting of conspiracy theories and defenses on his ailing Truth Social, he wrote: “Why are people so mean?”

The reason for his fear turned up tonight in a Department of Justice filing in response to his demand for the appointment of a special master to review the documents, and for the return of several of them to him. His requests gave the DOJ an opening to correct the record that he and his allies have been muddying.

The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room,” the DOJ said.

This document replaced the economic news as today’s big story. The DOJ laid out the timeline behind the attempt of the U.S. government to recover the materials Trump took. First, officials from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recognized that materials were missing and tried to get Trump to return them voluntarily. When he finally handed over 15 boxes, the officials recognized that some of the materials were “highly classified” and told the Department of Justice. 

Trump delayed the FBI examination of the boxes, but when officials got into them, they recognized their haphazard storage threatened national security. They got evidence of more records at Mar-a-Lago, for which they obtained a grand jury subpoena. Trump’s representatives handed over a few more documents, and a lawyer certified that that was it—they had done a diligent search and now could confirm that there were no more documents left. They said there were no materials stored anywhere but a storeroom, but they refused to let agents look inside the boxes there.

It was a lie both that there were no more documents, and that materials were contained in the storeroom. The FBI learned there were still more documents, got a search warrant, and on August 8 seized from at least two locations 33 more boxes with more than 100 classified records—twice as many classified documents as Trump and his representatives had handed over under the subpoena.

The U.S. government spelled out that “those records do not belong to him”; they belong to the United States. It said that Trump never asserted that the records had been declassified or asserted any claim of executive privilege, and Trump’s representatives indicated they thought the documents were classified. It made a strong case that the former president and his lawyer obstructed the search for the documents. 

Even more chilling than the words of the filing was the exhibit attached: a photo of SECRET, TOP SECRET, and SECRET/SCI files recovered from a container, spread out on a carpeted floor next to a banker’s box containing framed TIME magazine covers. 

Trump has added Chris Kise, the former solicitor general of Florida, to his legal team. Although the Republican National Committee has been paying the former president’s legal bills since he left office, it will not pay the legal fees he racks up over this issue.