Former President Donald Trump's attorneys asked a U.S. judge on Monday to deny the Justice Department access to the more than 100 classified documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida as part of an investigation into his handling of government records.
The Justice Department says without using the documents FBI agents won't be able to advance the monthslong investigation by questioning witnesses and developing other evidence.
The loss of access to the classified documents has also brought to a halt the intelligence community's assessment of the security risk posed by their storage at Mar-a-Lago, the Justice Department disclosed last week.
In a setback to the investigation, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week ordered the appointment of a special master to review the documents and barred the Justice Department from using the records for "criminal investigative purposes" while that review is underway.
Arguing that the seized classified documents belong to the government, the Justice Department last Thursday asked Cannon to "stay" her order, allowing agents to regain access to the records and limiting the special master's access to unclassified documents.
Federal prosecutors put Cannon on notice that they would appeal her decision if she did not grant their request for a partial stay. An appeal could further prolong an investigation that the Justice Department wants to wrap as quickly as possible.
Cannon, a Trump appointee, had given lawyers for the former president until Monday to respond to the Justice Department’s motion to curb the special master’s purview.
Arguing that the judge’s order for a special master is a “sensible preliminary step towards restoring order from chaos,” attorneys for Trump asked Cannon to reject the government’s motion.
“This convenient, and belated, claim by the government relative to enjoining the criminal team’s access to these documents only arises because the F.B.I. concedes the intelligence community review is actually just another facet of its criminal investigation,” the lawyers wrote.
In a separate court filing, the Trump attorneys objected to the Justice Department’s two proposed candidates for a special master — an outside party appointed to review evidence in sensitive court cases.
The Trump lawyers countered that the Justice Department’s claim of “irreparable damage” to national security appears exaggerated, asserting that the intelligence community’s review is “another facet” of the FBI investigation.
The monthslong controversy centers on the discovery of hundreds of pages of classified documents at Trump’s Florida club more than a year after he left the White House.
In their latest court filing, Trump's lawyers downplayed the investigation as a “storage dispute,” but the DOJ, viewing it as far more serious, says it is investigating at least three possible criminal offenses, including potential violations of a part of the Espionage Act.
Under the Presidential Records Act, Trump was required to turn over the documents to the National Archives. The FBI learned later that Trump had held on to some documents despite repeated efforts by the National Archies to retrieve them.
That triggered a criminal investigation. As part of that probe, the FBI executed a search warrant at the premises August 8, seizing nearly 13,000 items and documents, including more than 100 documents bearing classified markings.
The Justice Department and the Trump legal team remain at loggerheads over access to the documents and the appointment of a special master.
On Friday, the two sides proposed two candidates each for the role of the independent arbiter but differed over the official’s purview.
The Trump lawyers proposed that the special master be allowed to view all seized documents, classified and non-classified, and be given 90 days to complete the work.
The Justice Department wants the special master to view only non-classified documents and finish the job by October 17.
Trump has claimed that documents taken by the FBI were “all declassified” before they were taken to Mar-a-Lago. But his lawyers, while asserting that as president— Trump had the authority to declassify everything— did not make that claim.
