— Washington The Justice Department issued a 36-page response late Tuesday night in response to former President Donald Trump’s request that a federal judge appoint a third party to review the documents seized from his Florida home. The government argues that “obstructive conduct” happened at Mar-a-Lago in the months preceding the August 8 search, when Trump’s legal team reportedly attempted to conceal or remove some records from investigators.
In the filing, federal prosecutors argued that Trump’s request for a special master to review the records seized in the search “fails for multiple, independent reasons,” and they accused Trump of leveling “wide-ranging meritless accusations” against the U.S. government in the motion he submitted last week.
According to them, the appointment of a special master is unnecessary and would severely undermine vital government interests, particularly national security concerns.
Trump has not yet reacted to the lawsuit by the Justice Department, and he and his legal team have until Wednesday at 8:00 p.m. to file a response with the court.
Included in the court documents is a redacted FBI photograph — obtained during the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, according to the Justice Department — of materials found from a container in Trump’s office, including cover sheets for sensitive information marked “SECRET/SCI” and “TOP SECRET/SCI.” The documents are placed next to a container containing, among other things, a framed Time magazine cover.
The warning “Contains sensitive compartmented information up to HCS-P/SI/TK” is visible on the cover sheets.
Federal prosecutors told the court that “even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and DOJ attorneys conducting the review” of the records seized in this month’s search required additional clearances before they could review certain documents, indicating that they deemed the records to be extremely sensitive.
Trump’s alleged mishandling of secret papers, specifically data he transferred from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago property after he left office in January 2021, as well as possible obstruction of the probe, are under scrutiny.
The Justice Department disclosed on Friday that investigators discovered 184 unique documents with classification markings — including 67 marked confidential, 92 marked secret, and 25 marked top secret — in material the National Archives and Records Administration initially collected from Trump in mid-January. Later, the Archives submitted the matter to the Justice Department for additional investigation.
In their most recent filing, federal prosecutors stated that during the course of their investigation, the FBI “developed evidence” that, in addition to the 15 boxes retrieved by the National Archives in mid-January, “dozens of additional boxes” containing likely classified information remained at Mar-a-Lago.
According to Tuesday’s filing, the Justice Department received a grand jury subpoena to recover these additional classified papers, and on June 3, three FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney traveled to Mar-a-Lago to retrieve the documents. The authorities got a “single Redweld envelope double-wrapped in tape” from Trump’s representatives, according to prosecutors. Trump had previously stated that he accepted the subpoena “voluntarily” and later invited investigators to Florida for the June 3 meeting.
An unidentified “custodian of records” for Trump’s post-presidential office provided federal law enforcement with a signed certification letter on June 3 stating that a “diligent search” was conducted of 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 transferred from the White House to Mar-a-Lago were housed in a single location, a Trump attorney told federal officials on June 3: a storage room on the resort, according to the Justice Department’s response. The FBI’s early analysis of the documents indicated that the envelope contained “38 unique documents carrying classification marks, including five labelled CONFIDENTIAL, sixteen marked SECRET, and seventeen marked TOP SECRET.”
“Counsel for the former president offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 classified documents, remained on the premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly fifteen months after the end of the administration,” Justice Department attorneys told the court.
According to the Response, however, after the June 3 meeting at Mar-a-Lago, the FBI discovered “multiple sources of evidence” indicating that additional classified documents remained on the property and that a search of the storage room “would not have uncovered all the classified documents on the premises.” Prosecutors stated, “The government also obtained evidence that government papers were likely disguised and removed from the storage room, and that efforts were likely made to hinder the investigation of the government.”
In this context, the Justice Department requested the search warrant from a federal magistrate judge earlier this month, according to prosecutors. The document indicates that during the search at Mar-a-Lago on August 8, federal officials took 33 boxes, containers, or “pieces of evidence” containing more than 100 classified records, including those classified at the “highest levels.” The FBI reportedly discovered three sensitive documents on desks in Trump’s “45 Office” and seized them.
Thirteen boxes or containers confiscated by federal authorities contained documents with classification marks, some of which had colored cover sheets indicating their classification status — a photograph of which was provided to the court as extra evidence.
The filing asserts, “The fact that the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many classified documents as the ‘diligent search’ conducted by the former president’s counsel and other representatives over the course of weeks calls into question the representations made in the June 3 certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.”
This month, following the execution of a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property, the former president filed a complaint seeking a federal judge to appoint a special master to evaluate the materials and remove any privileged or unrelated records that were not within the scope of the warrant.
Judge Aileen Cannon of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida requested the Justice Department to clarify its position on Trump’s request last week and set a response deadline of Tuesday. She also directed the agency to produce a more complete list of all items confiscated during the execution of the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago; however, this document was to be filed under seal and was also due on Tuesday.
In an order released on Saturday, prior to the Justice Department’s response to Trump’s motion, Cannon announced her “preliminary intent” to appoint a special master, but her decision was not final. Thursday afternoon will see a hearing about Trump’s proposal.
On Monday, prosecutors stated in a separate court filing that investigators had completed their search for possibly privileged information and discovered a “small” number of papers that may be considered protected by attorney-client privilege.
As he prepares for a future presidential run in 2024, the former president has denied wrongdoing and alleged, without evidence, that the inquiry is a politically motivated attack. Trump has also suggested that he has the authority to declassify data, but the Justice Department stated on Tuesday that his representatives never “claimed that the former president declassified the materials or asserted any claim of presidential privilege.”
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