United States Department of Justice officials say that former president Donald Trump may have concealed documents during an FBI search of his property in June.
Following the June visit, FBI teams searched Trump’s property again in August – a search that prompted the former president to launch a lawsuit against the Department of Justice.
US presidents must transfer all of their documents and emails to a government agency called the National Archive – and the FBI is investigating whether Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing, saying the items were declassified.
The officials say in court papers that ‘efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation’, and that agents were ‘explicitly prohibited’ from searching a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida, the BBC reports.
Officials further claimed that other records were likely ‘concealed and removed’ from a storage room.
In the 54-page court papers released on Tuesday, Justice Department counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt said the FBI were able to recover a number of classified documents that Trump’s team had not handed over, despite previous requests.
‘That the FBI, in a matter of hours, recovered twice as many documents with classification markings as the ‘diligent search’ that the former president’s counsel and other representatives had weeks to perform…casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter.’
He added: ‘Critically, however, the former president’s counsel explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes that remained in the storage room, giving no opportunity for the government to confirm that no documents with classification markings remained.’
Bratt added that the ‘commingling’ of Trump’s personal items with classified documents was ‘relevant evidence of the statutory offenses under investigation’.
The BBC reports that Trump’s lawyers have asked that a ‘neutral’ third-party attorney – known as a special master – be brought in to determine whether the seized files are covered by executive privilege, which allows presidents to keep certain communications under wraps.
Special masters are normally appointed in criminal cases where there are concerns that some evidence may be protected under attorney-client privilege, or other protections that could make it inadmissible in court.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/whitehouse45/46451130962]