Former President Donald Trump’s legal team has issued a response to the Department of Justice’s court filing attempting to stop him from getting the confidential records back that were removed from his Mar-a-Lago residence during the FBI’s search earlier this month.
In its response, filing to the U.S. District Court in southern Florida, Trump’s team insists that the FBI’s raid was “unprecedented, unnecessary and legally unsupported” and hints at Trump’s plans to run for president in 2024.
“Three weeks after an unprecedented, unnecessary, and legally unsupported raid on the home of a President—and possibly a candidate against the current chief executive in 2024—the Government, represented by the Department of Justice and the United States Attorney’s Office, has filed an extraordinary document with this Court, suggesting that the DOJ, and the DOJ alone, should be entrusted with the responsibility of evaluating its unjustified pursuit of criminalizing a former President’s possession of personal and Presidential records in a secure setting,” the filing reads.
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The document accepts that classified material was found at Trump’s residence but asserts the National Archives should have expected that would be among the finds in the 15 boxes, as they were presidential records. Trump’s team downplays the Justice Department’s concerns about the recovered material, saying there was no “cause for alarm.”
“The purported justification for the initiation of this criminal probe was the alleged discovery of sensitive information contained within the 15 boxes of Presidential records,” Trump’s attorneys write. “But this ‘discovery’ was to be fully anticipated given the very nature of Presidential records. Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm.”
Rather, the former president’s lawyers state that under the Presidential Records Act, the National Archives “should have simply followed up... in a good faith effort to secure the recovery of the Presidential records.”
Trump’s attorneys say that “there is no question and, indeed there is broad agreement, that the matters before this Court center around the possession, by a President, of his own Presidential records.”
In its 36-page document released Tuesday night, however, the DOJ asserted that “those records do not belong to him” and instead belong to the government.
The filings stem from a civil lawsuit filed by Trump in an attempt to impose a special master to review the documents taken from the former president, which the DOJ has opposed, along with examining the issue of executive privilege. A special master would be someone independent and appointed by a court; for example, a retired judge.
Trump’s attorneys added that without a special master, prosecutors will “impugn, leak and publicize” details of its investigation.
Trump’s attorneys also lashed the DOJ for submitting an image to the court that shows “allegedly” classified material strewn across a room at Mar-a-Lago.
“The Government’s Response gratuitously included a photograph of allegedly classified materials, pulled from a container and spread across the floor for dramatic effect,” they write.
On Wednesday, Trump took to his Truth Social platform to claim he had “declassified” the documents before he left the White House. The DOJ disputed this in its own filing.
A federal judge is expected to decide Thursday whether to appoint a special master in the case. On Saturday, a Florida judge signaled her support to approve Trump’s request.
Speaking to CNN after its release, ex-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said the response is “all over the map” and described the filing as “hysterical.”
“I couldn’t believe what they were saying,” he said. “They’re glossing over the point it’s actually not his records.”
