Donald Trump fights DOJ bid to resume review of 100 classified records seized by FBI from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida
- Trump’s lawyers in a filing dispute the Justice Department’s claim that the 100 records in question are in fact classified
- Weeks after the FBI searched Trump’s home, his lawyers filed a civil lawsuit demanding the appointment of a special master to review the seized records
Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers said on Monday that they oppose the US Justice Department’s request to continue to review classified documents seized by the FBI from his Florida estate last month in an ongoing criminal investigation.
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 8 search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
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 Trump disputes the Justice Department’s claim that the 100 records in question are in fact classified, and they reminded Cannon that a president generally has broad powers to declassify records.
However, they stopped short of suggesting that Trump had declassified the documents – a claim he has made on social media but not in any official court filings.