DOJ points out that Trump's legal filings don't align with his public statements about the Mar-a-Lago records

Advertisement
DOJ points out that Trump's legal filings don't align with his public statements about the Mar-a-Lago records
Former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022.AP Photo/Mary Altaffer
  • The Justice Department pointed out that Trump's court filings don't back up his claim that he declassified all the records found at Mar-a-Lago.
  • Trump "seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records" but didn't "provide any evidence" that they had been declassified, DOJ said.
Advertisement

The Justice Department on Tuesday pointed out a key discrepancy in former President Donald Trump's legal arguments in the wake of the FBI's Mar-a-Lago search — none of his court filings back up his public claim that he had declassified all the government records seized in the search.

Trump "principally seeks to raise questions about the classification status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act ('PRA')," the department said in a new legal filing. "But Plaintiff does not actually assert—much less provide any evidence—that any of the seized records bearing classification markings have been declassified."

The filing came as part of the ongoing court fight between Trump and the DOJ over the appointment of a "special master" to review the seized records and sift out documents that might be protected by executive or attorney-client privilege. US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, ruled in favor of Trump's request for a special master and barred the DOJ from using any of the seized records, until they had been reviewed, as part of its criminal investigation into Trump's handling of national security information.

But the department last week asked Cannon for a partial stay on her ruling, requesting that she allow prosecutors access to a set of just over 100 classified documents.

Meanwhile, though the former president has frequently said he had a "standing order" to declassify all the records that were moved to Mar-a-Lago, more than a dozen of his former aides told CNN they had no knowledge of such an order, and Trump's legal team has not made the claim in any of its filings.

Advertisement

They only said, in a Monday filing, that the government "has not proven" the records with classified markings were still classified and that "this issue is to be determined later."

Trump's lawyers' focus on whether the documents in question were classified or not also misses the point; none of the three laws, including the Espionage Act, that he's being investigated for violating depend on the classificaton of the records.

The Justice Department pointed that out in an earlier filing as well. Specifically, it pointed out that Section E of the Espionage Act, one of the three laws Trump is suspected of having violated, makes it a crime to retain any government records pertaining to the US's national defense, regardless of classification level.

The other two federal statutes Trump's suspected of having broken — 18 USC Section 2071 and 18 USC Section 1519 — criminalize the concealment, removal, and destruction of government records, also regardless of classification level.

In its Tuesday filing, the government argued that the issues Trump has raised with respect to his request for a special master are "ultimately ireelevant."

Advertisement

"Even if Plaintiff had declassified these records, and even if he somehow had categorized them as his 'personal' records for purposes of the [Presidential Records Act] — neither of which has been shown — nothing in the PRA or any other source of law establishes a plausible claim of privilege or any other justification for an injunction restricting the government's review and use of records at the center of an ongoing criminal and national security investigation," prosecutors said.

"And nothing in Plaintiff's Response rebuts the compelling public interest in granting the limited stay the government seeks," they added.

{{}}