Trump asks judge to block DOJ from viewing classified records seized from Mar-a-Lago
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday asked a judge to continue blocking the Justice Department from reviewing classified documents seized from Tr
WASHINGTON — Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Monday asked a judge to continue blocking the Justice Department from reviewing classified documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon last week temporarily blocked the DOJ from using the records seized on Aug. 8 when the FBI searched Trump's home until a special master is able to review them. The DOJ challenged her order later in the week.
In a court filing Monday that called the Justice Department's investigation into the former president "unprecedented and misguided," Trump's lawyers claimed that "there still remains a disagreement as to the classification status of the documents" that bore classified markings. While Trump and his associates have claimed to the media that Trump, while president, declassified various documents, his lawyers did not make that claim explicitly.
The legal battle is over the government's investigation into how hundreds of pages of classified government records continued to be held at Mar-a-Lago, even after a Trump lawyer had certified in June that there were no more classified records at the estate. Cannon, a Trump appointee, granted Trump's request for a special master Sept. 5 and temporarily blocked the government from using the classified files as part of its investigation.
Cannon did say that a national security review of the records could continue, but the Justice Department said that was complicated because the FBI is part of the intelligence community and "classification review and assessment are closely interconnected with — and cannot be readily separated from — areas of inquiry of DOJ’s and the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation."
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