According to Department of Justice officials, former US President Donald Trump may have hidden documents during an FBI search of his property in June.
The FBI is looking into whether Mr. Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021. US presidents are required to transfer all of their papers and emails to a government organization called the National Archive.
In a court filing released on Tuesday August 30 ahead of a court hearing Thursday, the department said “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation”.
The Justice department alleged federal agents were “explicitly prohibited” from searching a storage room at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion.
Other records were likely “concealed and removed” from a storage room, the officials said.
In the 54-page filing the 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 said.
Further describing the June search, the filing said: “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.”
Following the June visit, FBI teams searched Trump’s property again in Augus. This search was more brazen and it grabbed headlines.
Bratt added that the “commingling” of Trump’s personal items with classified documents is “relevant evidence of the statutory offenses under investigation”.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and said the items were declassified.
He had been suing for a detailed list of exactly what was taken from his estate, and is asking for the government to return any item which was not in the scope of the search warrant.
But Bratt said that any presidential records seized in the search warrant “belong to the United States, not to the former president”.
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.