FBI seizes nearly 200,000 pages of Trump documents at Mar-a-Lago
Workers load boxes onto a truck on West Executive Avenue between the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, on Thursday, January 14, 2021.
Jim Lo Scalzo | Bloomberg | beautiful pictures
FBI agents seized nearly 200,000 pages of documents from the former President’s Florida mansion Donald Trumphis lawyers revealed in a new court filing.
It was previously reported that FBI agents had obtained about 11,000 documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach during an August 8 raid related to the criminal investigation into him. removed government documents from the White House when he left office early. 2021. More than 100 documents have been classified or highly classified.
The filing by Trump’s attorneys in federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday night was the first time the large number of pages including those documents have been disclosed.
The filing says the Justice Department is “too optimistic and aggressive” about meeting deadlines for scanning documents seized by an external data provider and their subsequent review by an authorized person. called the special master in the case.
That particular owner, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, was appointed by another federal judge to review the seized records to determine which of them, if any, are protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege and are exempt from use in criminal investigations.
Trump’s attorneys say mid-October is the “actual production deadline,” contrasting the DOJ’s view that a supplier can complete a scan by October 7.
A man walks past boxes being moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building, just outside the West Wing, inside the White House complex, Thursday, January 14, 2021, in Washington.
Gerald Herbert | AP
A federal appeals court last week allowed the DOJ to continue using classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation.
The DOJ’s investigation hinges on the fact that, by law, government records in the possession of the president must be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration when they leave office.
The DOJ asserts that Trump has no right to claim executive privilege over any government documents in his possession while he is no longer president.