| Today, we learned more that could put Donald Trump or his advisers in legal trouble: The government thinks Trump's allies may have hidden secret documents from FBI agents looking for them at Mar-a-Lago. Here's what happened, what we know, and what it could mean for Trump. (That last question, as always, is the toughest to answer.) What happened: This week there's a legal battle about whether the government can keep the material FBI agents recovered from Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. In response to Trump's request for a third party to sort through the documents, the government shared in a late-night court filing Tuesday that it thinks there is evidence Trump and/or his legal team obstructed its search. What we know, based on the government's court filing and its affidavit for a search warrant: It's helpful to back up some, because this has been going on all year. In January, after months of asking, the National Archives went down to Mar-a-Lago and retrieved boxes of official government records from Trump's presidency. Seeing that they included a number of sensitive documents, the National Archives notified the FBI, which found 184 documents marked classified, including some as top secret. In June, agents went down to Mar-a-Lago with a subpoena to ask for any classified documents still in Trump's hands. They recovered 38 documents marked classified, and a Trump representative signed a statement saying they had given all classified material back. That turned out to be wrong. The FBI kept investigating and said that it found evidence that boxes had been moved: "Records were likely concealed and removed," prosecutors wrote, and "efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government's investigation." So the FBI got a search warrant and in August went to Mar-a-Lago without notifying Trump. They recovered 100 more classified documents — some of them so secret, prosecutors wrote in the court filing, that "even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents." That's an astonishing amount of classified material, legal experts said. And it took all year for the government to get it back. To underscore their point, prosecutors attached to the court filing a photo showing a box of government material they said was recovered from Trump's office. In it are bright-yellow-bordered folders marked "Top Secret," as well as folders bordered in red and marked "Secret."  The Justice Department shared this photo of secret material it said it recovered at Trump's Mar-a-Lago property. (Justice Department/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) (Department Of Justice Handout/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) | What this means for Trump: If the government is investigating him or his legal team over a possible crime, obstruction appears to be top of the list. The Justice Department does believe there is probable cause a crime or crimes were committed, or else it wouldn't have applied for and gotten that search warrant from a court. But it's not clear whether it will take the next step: charging a former president. How a Democrat could win statewide in Alaska today  Democratic House candidate Mary Peltola in Anchorage. (Kerry Tasker/Reuters) | Perhaps by the time you read this newsletter, we'll know who won a special election for an open House seat in Alaska. It's the only House seat in the state, and it's open for the first time in 50 years after the death of Republican Don Young. And a Democrat could win it. If Democrat Mary Pelota wins, it would be the fifth big special election for Democrats since the fall of Roe v. Wade this summer. (She would also make history as the first Alaska Native to win a seat in Congress.) It would also be the first clear example this midterm cycle of a Trump-endorsed candidate — in this case, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin — losing to a Democrat. Come November, Republicans are worried this pattern will play out across the nation for their party. They fear their more extreme candidates, from Senate nominees in Arizona and Georgia to Republicans running for governor in Michigan and Pennsylvania, to House candidates in Virginia, will lose because they hugged Trump too tightly. Alaska won't perfectly predict what will happen in November. (Special elections never do.) Voters there ranked their choices. That means if Palin loses, it may be because she was just too unpopular to develop a winning coalition, rather than an affirmation of Democrats' strength in a state that Trump won in 2020 by 10 points. But that a Democrat is even close to winning statewide in Alaska, after 50 years of Republican rule, is yet another reason the Democrats I talk to are feeling cautiously optimistic about November's midterm elections. | 
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