While Donald Trump has been repeatedly complaining that the FBI’s seizure of his passports is proof that agents wreaked havoc while searching his Florida golf club, there’s a good indication that the former president faces real trouble regarding how and where he was keeping these documents, legal experts told NBC News.

Responding to Trump’s demand for a special master to sift through evidence seized from his home, Justice Department officials, in a special footnote countered his complaints that this was an overreach to take the three passports, which wound up being returned.

The DOJ strictly followed the terms of the search warrant, stating in the filing that “the government seized the contents of a desk drawer that contained classified documents and governmental records commingled with other documents.”

“The other documents included two official passports, one of which was expired, and one personal passport, and one personal passport, which was expired,” per the filing. “The location of the passports is relevant evidence in an investigation of unauthorized retention and mishandling of national defense information.”

I don’t know why these passports were kept in the same drawer as the classified documents and government records, but I think this is a major gaffe on the part of Trump and his team.

And if you’re wondering why the passports are relevant here, NBC News legal analyst Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney, says the passports point directly to Trump’s involvement.

“In most searches you look for identity documents to tie a suspect to the evidence you’re looking for — photographs, IDs, utility bills,” says McQuade, who’s now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. “If you find the contraband in the same room as the identity documents, there’s a fair inference that person had dominion and control over the documents.

And the Justice Department reports that the drawer containing the classified documents and the passports was in Trump’s “45 office” at his Mar-a-Lago home.

Writing for The Daily Beast, McQuade even said the passports could be the FBI’s “smoking gun”.

“Finding the passports side by side with the classified documents suggests he himself is the one who handled them,” McQuade concluded.

As I’ve already said, keeping these documents together seems like a major mistake on Trump’s part. It may actually lead to the once mighty falling.