Former US president Donald Trump’s attorneys say they oppose the Justice Department’s request to continue reviewing classified documents taken by the FBI from his Florida estate last month.
Key points:
- Mr Trump’s lawyers said there still remains a disagreement as to the classification status of the documents
- The documents were seized in August from the former president’s Florida estate
- The probe is one of several investigations Mr Trump is facing from his time in office
In a court filing, his lawyers also asked US District Judge Aileen Cannon to require an independent arbiter, called a special master, to include the roughly 100 documents with classification markings in its review of more than 11,000 records recovered during the court-approved August search at Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
Mr Trump is under investigation for retaining government records, some of which were marked as highly classified, at Mar-a-Lago after leaving office in January 2021.
The government is also investigating possible obstruction of the probe.
His lawyers in the filing said Mr Trump disputes the Justice Department’s claim that the 100 records in question are classified, and they reminded Ms Cannon that a president generally has broad powers to declassify records.
However, they stopped short of suggesting that Mr Trump had declassified the documents — a claim he has made on social media but not in any official court filings.
“There still remains a disagreement as to the classification status of the documents,” they wrote.
“The government’s position therefore assumes a fact not yet established.”
If Ms Cannon rules that the Justice Department cannot continue relying on the classified materials for its criminal probe or insists on letting the special master review them, prosecutors have threatened to appeal to the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiralled out of control, the government wrongfully seeks to criminalise the possession by the 45th President of his own presidential and personal records,” Mr Trump’s lawyers wrote.
“The government should therefore not be permitted to skip the process and proceed straight to a preordained conclusion,” they added.
The documents probe is one of several federal and state investigations Mr Trump is facing from his time in office and in private business.
He has suggested he might run for president again in 2024, but has not made any commitment.
About two weeks after the FBI searched Mr Trump’s home, his attorneys filed a civil lawsuit demanding the appointment of a special master to review the seized records for materials that could be covered by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege — a legal doctrine that can shield some presidential records from disclosure.
The Justice Department has opposed appointing a special master to review records for executive privilege claims, saying the records do not belong to the former president.
In ruling in favour of Mr Trump’s request for a special master last week, Ms Cannon rejected the Justice Department’s arguments that the records belong to the government and that because Mr Trump is no longer president he cannot claim executive privilege.
Ms Cannon was appointed to the bench by Mr Trump in 2020 just months before he left office.
If the special master decides some of the material is covered by Mr Trump’s privilege claims, it could hamper the government’s investigation.
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Reuters