U.S. officials have not proven that former President Donald Trump held classified records, lawyers for the ex-president said in a new filing on Sept. 20.
Materials marked classified were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by FBI agents executing a search warrant in August, and the government has repeatedly described them as classified records.
Request for Partial Stay
The lawyers were asking for a partial stay of an order entered by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who appointed a special master to review the seized records and ordered the government to halt using the seized records for anything apart from a national security review.The Department of Justice asked the court to allow it to continue using the records for a criminal investigation into Trump.
Its argument in part hinged on whether Trump has standing to claim legitimate access to materials marked classified. U.S. lawyers said he did not “because those records are government property, over which the Executive Branch has exclusive control and in which Plaintiff has no property interest.” Executive privilege claims cannot work because Trump is no longer president, they added.
“Even if a former President could assert executive privilege against the Executive Branch’s review and use of its own documents, any such assertion would inevitably fail as to the records bearing classification markings,” they also said.
Trump’s Response
The government’s arguments assume, without presenting proof, that the documents marked classified are classified, Trump’s lawyers said in the new filing, which was lodged in response to the government motion.They said that all government records, regardless of classification, fall under the Presidential Records Act or the Federal Records Act. Each record falls under one or the other; none fall under both.
Under the presidential act, Trump has an interest in and ability to access records from when he was president, according to the new filing.
Trump’s position is that judges and others cannot make determinations on the documents without a “thoughtful, organized review” by the special master—and lawyers for the former president said the government should not be permitted to keep using the documents for its criminal probe because they “may very well be off limits.”
The new filing came shortly before the first hearing was scheduled involving the special master, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan appointee, to go over details of Dearie’s potential review of the seized materials.