It appears that government-owned White House records and highly classified documents aren’t the only government property being stored at former president Donald Trump’s Palm Beach residence in Florida.
According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “senior Israeli figures” have spent the past three years attempting to arrange for the return of a set of priceless antiquities that were lent to the White House for a 2019 Hannukah celebration.
The ancient articles at issue include a set of ceramic oil lamps, which Haaretz described as part of the Jewish state’s collection of national treasures. They were sent to the US in 2019 with the consent of then-Israeli Antiquities Authority director Israel Hasson, who ordered at the time that they be returned in a matter of weeks.
But because of “a bureaucratic difficulty,” the lamps were never put on display at the White House, and they were reportedly never returned to Israel.
Mr Hassan told Haaretz that they initially were not brought back because of a desire for them to be transported by a government courier to avoid the possibility of accidental damage. Then, the Covid-19 pandemic brought those plans to a halt when countries closed their borders to international travel.
“We wanted our man to go and bring it back, but then Covid broke out, and everything got stuck,” he said.
And while the Antiquities Authority asked a wealthy Israeli-American donor, Saul Fox, to hold on to the items, they somehow ended up at Mr Trump’s 1920s-era mansion turned social club, where he has kept his primary residence since leaving the White House.
An Israeli official described the situation as a “misunderstanding,” and though Mr Hasson’s successor, Eli Eskozido, has asked Israel’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, ex-Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, and former US ambassador to Israel David Friedman to aid in arranging for the lamps to be returned, those efforts have been unsuccessful.
Haaretz reported that it’s not known whether Mr Trump knows the lamps are at Mar-a-Lago, where the twice-impeached, twice-indicted ex-president is accused of hoarding national defence information and failing to return it when asked by the Department of Justice.
A source told the Israeli newspaper that he would not be surprised if “the items Israel seeks are also eventually found in some bathroom” at Mar-a-Lago, where a now-infamous photograph showed Mr Trump storing White House records in banker’s boxes in one of the club’s lavatories.
