Does a president have the right to withhold privileged documents from the National Archives?
CBSN
Former President Donald Trump's attorneys say executive privilege should protect records seized this month from his residence in Florida and earlier this year by the FBI, as the legal battle over who should control the Trump presidency's records continues.
Trump's attorneys, who have requested that a "special master" review documents taken in the Aug. 8 search, argued in a filing Monday that documents from Trump's presidency are "presumptively privileged." Trump has been trying to shield these and other records from the FBI. A May letter from the acting U.S. archivist to Trump's attorneys released Tuesday shows Trump's team attempted to claim a "protective assertion of executive privilege" so that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) wouldn't hand the FBI records he had voluntarily returned earlier this year.
The FBI search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, which unearthed 11 sets of classified documents, stemmed from Trump's failure to give these records to the Archives when he left office or at any time since then when NARA demanded them.
