Former United States president Donald Trump’s legal team said on Wednesday that the discovery of sensitive information in the documents found by the FBI during their raid of his Mar-a-Lago residence was not a “cause for alarm”. They told the judge in their latest filing that the presidential records are “sensitive by nature” and continued to request a “special master” to review the materials.
“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” Trump’s lawyers told the judge according to Reuters.
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The FBI conducted a raid on Trump’s residence in Florida after a number of witnesses said that there could be documents pertaining to national security and obstruction of justice, an affidavit claimed.
The affidavit, filed by the US Justice Department, also claimed that the FBI found around 700 documents in Mar-a-Lago and they were classified into three categories – Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.
The argument from Trump’s lawyers came one day after the Justice Department said that the documents were “likely concealed” to obstruct the ongoing investigation by the FBI.
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In the latest court filing, the DOJ said that it provided the detailed background on the build-up to the raid “to correct the incomplete and inaccurate narrative set forth in (Trump’s) filings.”
Trump continued to defend his position and also criticised the authorities for deliberately targeting him ahead of the mid-term elections. Trump’s team also argued that as a former President, Trump “continues to have rights related to the assertion of executive privilege”.
However, this argument was called “illogical” by the DOJ who said that Trump “has no property interest in any presidential records (including classified records) seized from the premises”, according to AFP.
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