Washington – The Justice Department filed a 36-page response Tuesday night to former President Donald Trump’s request that a federal judge appoint a third party to review records seized from his Florida residence. The government alleges “obstructive conduct” occurred at Mar-a-Lago after Trump’s legal team allegedly tried to withhold or delete certain records from investigators in the months leading up to the Aug. 8 search.
In the filing, federal prosecutors argued that Trump’s request for a special master to review records seized in the search “fails for multiple independent reasons” and accused the former president of making “broad allegations without merit.” against the US government. in the motion he presented last week.
The appointment of a special master, they said, “is unnecessary and would significantly harm important government interests, including those of national security.”
Among the documents filed in court is an FBI redacted photo, taken during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department said, of records recovered from a dumpster at the office of Trump that include cover sheets for classified information marked “SECRET//SCI” and “TOP SECRET//SCI”. The documents are placed next to a container with a framed Time magazine cover, among other items.
On the covers is the message “Contains sensitive compartmentalized information up to HCS-P/SI/TK”.
A photo filed in an Aug. 30 Department of Justice filing that appears to have been taken during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago shows records strewn across a floor that include cover sheets for classified information marked “SECRET//SCI” and “TOP SECRET//SCI”. US Government photo
Federal prosecutors told the court that in some cases, “even FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys who conducted the review” of records seized in this month’s search they required additional authorizations before they could review certain documents, suggesting they found the records to be extremely thin. sensitive.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed he declassified the records visible in the photo from the FBI. However, the Justice Department said Trump’s representatives never “asserted that the former president had declassified documents or claimed any executive privilege.”
“Horrible how the FBI, during the Mar-a-Lago raid, randomly threw documents all over the floor (maybe pretending I did it!) and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.” Trump wrote on Wednesday. “I thought they wanted it to be kept secret? Lucky I declassified!”
His legal team also has until 8pm on Wednesday to submit their own response to the court.
Investigators are looking into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, specifically the records he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence when he left office in January 2021, as well as the possible obstruction of the investigation.
The Justice Department disclosed Friday that earlier this year, investigators found 184 unique documents with classification marks, including 67 documents marked confidential, 92 documents marked secret and 25 documents marked top secret. in material the National Archives and Records Administration initially collected from Trump in the media. -January The Archives subsequently referred the matter to the Department of Justice for further review.
In their latest filing, federal prosecutors said that during the course of their investigation, the FBI “developed evidence” indicating that, in addition to the 15 boxes recovered by the Archives in mid-January, “dozens of boxes additional” that likely contained classified information remained. at Mar-a-Lago.
To retrieve these additional classified records, the Justice Department obtained a grand jury subpoena, and on June 3, three FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney visited Mar-a-Lago to obtain the materials, according to Tuesday’s presentation. Officials received a “single double-taped Redweld envelope” from Trump’s representatives, prosecutors said. Trump had previously said he “voluntarily” accepted the subpoena and later invited investigators to Florida for the June 3 meeting.
According to the Justice Department’s response, an unidentified individual who characterized himself as Trump’s post-presidency office’s “custodian of records” provided federal law enforcement with a letter of certification signed on 3 June that said a “diligent search” was conducted of the boxes brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago and that “any and all” documents responsive to the grand jury subpoena were turned over.
The records brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were stored in one place, a Trump lawyer present June 3 told federal officials: a storage room at the property, the Justice Department said in the your answer A preliminary review of the documents by the FBI revealed that the envelope contained “38 unique documents with classification marks, including 5 documents marked CONFIDENTIAL, 16 documents marked SECRET, and 17 documents marked TOP SECRET.”
“The former president’s counsel offered no explanation as to why the boxes of government records, including 38 classified documents, remained at the facility nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly a a year and a half after the end of the administration,” Justice Department lawyers told the court.
But after the June 3 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI, according to the response, says it discovered “multiple sources of evidence” indicating that more classified documents remained at the property and that a log at storage room “wouldn’t be”. have discovered all the classified documents on the premises.” Prosecutors added that “the government also developed evidence that government records were likely hidden and removed from storage and that efforts were likely made to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
It was in that context that the Justice Department sought a search warrant from a federal federal judge earlier this month, prosecutors said. During the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, federal agents seized 33 boxes, containers or “evidence” containing more than 100 classified records, including classified information at the “highest levels,” according to the file Three classified documents were allegedly found on the desks of Trump’s “Office 45” and were also taken by the FBI.
Of the items seized by federal agents, 13 boxes or containers had documents with classification marks, some of which contained colored cover sheets indicating their classification status, a photo of which was presented to the court in a supplemental filing.
“That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many classified documents as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s lawyer and other representatives had weeks to conduct serious questions about statements made in the June 3 certification and calls into question the extent of cooperation in this matter,” the file states.
After a search warrant was executed at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort earlier this month, the former president filed a lawsuit asking a federal judge to appoint a special master to examine the materials and filter out any privileged or unrelated documents that were not within the deadline. the scope of the authorized court order.
Last week, Judge Aileen Cannon of the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida asked the Justice Department to explain its view of Trump’s request, setting a deadline for the government’s response. He also ordered the department to send a more detailed list detailing all the property seized during the execution of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, although that document, also by Tuesday, was due file sealed
In an order issued Saturday, before the Justice Department responded to Trump’s motion, Cannon notified his “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master, though his decision was not final. A hearing on Trump’s request is set for Thursday afternoon.
Prosecutors said in a separate court filing Monday that investigators had already completed their search for potentially privileged information and found a “limited” set of documents that could be considered protected under the attorney-client privilege.
For his part, the former president has denied wrongdoing and has claimed without evidence that the investigation is a politically motivated attack as he prepares for a possible presidential bid in 2024.