Trump's lawyers downplay discovery of classified records at his Florida home
The Hindu
The filing comes just one day before Donald Trump's legal team will square off against the U.S. Justice Department in a federal court
Former President Donald Trump's lawyers on Wednesday sought to downplay the federal government's discovery of highly classified records inside his Florida estate, telling a judge that presidential records by their very nature are sensitive.
The filing comes just one day before Mr. Trump's legal team will square off against the U.S. Justice Department in a federal court in West Palm Beach, in a bid by Mr. Trump to convince U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master to review the materials seized by the FBI from his home on Aug. 8.
"Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm," his attorneys said.
They also attacked the Justice Department for executing the unprecedented search, saying that Mr. Trump was engaging in a "standard give-and-take" with the U.S. National Archives over the return of Presidential records and that he allowed FBI agents to "come to his home and provide security advice."
The filing by Mr. Trump's team came less than 24 hours after the Justice Department released a scathing 54-page document with exhibits outlining publicly for the first time evidence it obtained that Mr. Trump may have tried to obstruct its investigation by deliberately trying to conceal documents.
In it, prosecutors said Mr. Trump's representatives falsely certified that they had conducted a thorough search, and that all records responsive to a grand jury subpoena had been returned when FBI agents and a top Justice Department official paid a visit to Mar-a-Lago in June to retrieve the materials.
At that visit, Mr. Trump's attorney also prohibited government investigators from opening or looking inside some of the boxes that Mr. Trump kept inside one of his storage rooms, they said.
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