WHICH IS WHY HIS FOLLOWERS ARE EVEN MORE FRANTIC THAN USUAL:

First he said that he was "working and cooperating with" government agents who he claimed had inappropriately entered his home. Then, when the government revealed that the F.B.I., during its search, had recovered nearly a dozen sets of documents that were marked classified, he suggested the agents had planted evidence.

Finally, his aides claimed he had a "standing order" to declassify documents that left the Oval Office for his residence, and that some of the material was protected by attorney-client and executive privilege.

Those are the ever-shifting explanations that former President Donald J. Trump and his aides have given regarding what F.B.I. agents found last week in a search of his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla.

Mr. Trump and his allies have cast the search as a partisan assault while amplifying conflicting arguments about the handling of sensitive documents and failing to answer a question at the center of the federal investigation: Why was he keeping documents, some still marked classified, at an unsecured Florida resort when officials had sought for a year to retrieve them?

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