Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and former President Donald Trump are due to appear in a hearing Thursday as a federal judge considers whether to appoint a special monitor to review materials the FBI seized from Trump’s house in Florida.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon said last weekend that she was leaning toward appointing a special chancellor but wanted to hear what the administration had to say first. Although she opposed the appointment of the person in charge, the government said that if Cannon appoints that person, the review would have to be completed before September 30.
Trump’s lawyers have asked that he be returned any documents that he might be entitled to keep, including material related to conversations he has had with his lawyers about the various investigations into his presidency, the 2020 election, and the trade issues that are being discussed. have been carried out by the DOJ, officials in New York and the southern state of Georgia.
The government said earlier this week that its review turned up “a limited set of materials” that should be returned to Trump.
DOJ attorneys said in a filing Tuesday night: “The appointment of a special handler would impede the government’s ongoing criminal investigation” into whether Trump obstructed justice or violated other US laws by storing the documents in his office. owned by Mar-a-Lago.
Justice also said that if the special master reviewed classified documents, “it would prevent the intelligence community from [de EEUU] conduct its ongoing review of the national security risk that improper storage of these highly sensitive materials may have caused and identify measures to rectify or mitigate any harm that improper storage may have caused.”
august quest
Trump’s attorneys said in a Wednesday filing that the government’s search of Trump’s estate on Aug. 8 was “unprecedented, unnecessary and legally unsupported.”
They added that what the agents found “was completely expected” and that “the notion that presidential records would contain sensitive information should never have been a cause for alarm.”
The Justice Department alleged in its filing Tuesday that it only sought and obtained court approval for an unprecedented search for highly classified national security documents in Trump’s estate after concluding that “efforts were likely made to obstruct the investigation.” of the government”.
The unannounced search came after one of Trump’s lawyers said in June that all classified documents had been returned to the National Archives, as required by US law once the president leaves office.
Trump aides delivered 15 boxes containing 184 classified documents to the Archives in January and 38 more documents in June.
However, the Justice Department said the Trump attorney who claimed everything had been turned over “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room.” [en Mar-a-Lago]without giving an opportunity for the government to confirm that there are no documents left with classification marks”.
The Justice Department later explained: “The government obtained evidence that a search limited to the storage room would not have uncovered all of the classified documents.”
Suspecting that more classified documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized the unprecedented search of Trump’s residence and obtained approval of the search from federal Judge Bruce Reinhart in Florida.
The 36-page court file included a photograph of some of the classified documents found in Trump’s office, which had been spread out on the carpet for the photo. The Justice Department file says some of the documents were so highly classified that lawyers who later read them had to obtain additional security clearances before they could review them.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump said: “It is appalling the way the FBI, during the Mar-a-Lago raid, randomly threw documents all over the floor (perhaps pretending I was the one!) did!), and then started taking pictures of them for the public to see.”
Trump again claimed that he had declassified the documents, although he has not presented any evidence that he had done so before he left office when his authority to do so expired.
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