{"id":25095,"date":"2022-08-24T08:41:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-24T08:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=25095"},"modified":"2026-07-08T02:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T02:22:16","slug":"trump-appears-to-concede-he-illegally-retained-official-documents-in-filing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2022\/08\/24\/trump-appears-to-concede-he-illegally-retained-official-documents-in-filing\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump appears to concede he illegally retained official documents in filing"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing surrounding the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as\u00a0the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege.<\/p>\n

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The\u00a0motion submitted on Monday\u00a0by the former president\u2019s lawyers argued that a court should appoint a so-called special master to separate out and determine what materials the justice department can review as evidence due to privilege issues.<\/p>\n

But the argument from Trump that some of the documents are subject to executive privilege protections indicates that those documents are official records that he is not authorized to keep and should have turned over to the National Archives at the end of the administration.<\/p>\n

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The motion, in that regard, appeared to concede that Trump violated one of the criminal statutes listed on the warrant used by the\u00a0FBI<\/a>\u00a0to search the former president\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort \u2013\u00a018 USC 2071<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 concerning the unlawful removal of government records.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf he\u2019s acknowledging that he\u2019s in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives,\u201d said Asha Rangappa, a former\u00a0FBI\u00a0agent and former associate dean at Yale Law School.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so it\u2019s not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he\u2019s being investigated for and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish,\u201d Rangappa said.<\/p>\n

Trump remains able to make the case that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents, seek a more detailed receipt for what the FBI retrieved from\u00a0Mar-a-Lago\u00a0and restrain the justice department from further reviewing the materials until the process is complete.<\/p>\n

The reasoning, former US attorneys say, is that there could be communications seized by the FBI that are privileged, but not used in furtherance of a crime, and even if the justice department wanted to use them in its investigation, it should be precluded from doing so.<\/p>\n

A person directly involved in Trump\u2019s legal defense noted \u2013 repeating parts in the filing \u2013 that the Presidential Records Act had no enforcement mechanism, even as they conceded that the justice department might pursue the privilege argument as a tacit admission.<\/p>\n

Potential obstruction<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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But Trump\u2019s motion could throw up additional challenges for the former president, with additional passages in the filing laying out a months-long battle by the justice department to recover certain records in a pattern of interactions that could be construed as obstruction of justice.<\/p>\n

The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago listed obstruction for the statutes potentially violated, though it was not clear whether that was obstruction of the investigation into the very retrieval of government documents from Mar-a-Lago or for another, separate investigation.<\/p>\n

Yet the section in Trump\u2019s motion titled \u201cPresident Donald J Trump\u2019s Voluntary Assistance\u201d detailed the multiple steps the justice department took to initially retrieve 15 boxes in January, additional materials in June, and then 26 boxes when the FBI conducted its search.<\/p>\n

The filing discussed how Trump returned the 15 boxes to the National Archives, and then \u2013 one day after the National Archives told Trump\u2019s lawyers that those boxes contained classified documents \u2013 \u201caccepted service of a grand jury subpoena\u201d for additional documents with classification markings.<\/p>\n

But despite taking custody of documents responsive to the subpoena, the justice department learned there may have been additional documents marked as classified, and issued a subpoena on 22 June demanding security camera footage of the hallway outside where the materials were being stored.<\/p>\n

That subpoena for security tapes, as well as a subsequent subpoena for CCTV footage of that area from just before the FBI search on 8 August, suggests the justice department did not think Trump was being entirely truthful or forthcoming in his interactions with the investigation.<\/p>\n

Those suspicions were well-founded: when the government retrieved materials from Mar-a-Lago on that second collection in June, Trump\u2019s custodian of records attested they had given back documents responsive to the subpoena \u2013 only for the FBI to retrieve\u00a0more boxes of classified materials.<\/p>\n

Separately, apart from late filing of the motion two weeks after the FBI search took place, the brief itself appears to be procedurally problematic.<\/p>\n

The motion was not filed in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the warrant was approved. Instead, it was filed in Ft Pierce, where the judge has no knowledge of the underlying affidavit \u2013 and could rule in such a way to reveal to Trump if he or his lawyers are suspects for obstruction.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u2026 we have a small favour to ask. Millions are turning to the Guardian for open, independent, quality news every day, and readers in 180 countries around the world now support us financially.<\/p>\n

We believe everyone deserves access to information that\u2019s grounded in science and truth, and analysis rooted in authority and integrity. That\u2019s why we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all readers, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay. This means more people can be better informed, united, and inspired to take meaningful action.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump appeared to concede in his court filing surrounding the seizure of materials from his Florida resort that he unlawfully retained official government documents, as\u00a0the former president argued that some of the documents collected by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege. The\u00a0motion submitted on Monday\u00a0by the former president\u2019s lawyers argued that a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":25044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[4836,8659,7960,7703,10152,10507,5321,2264,10197,12005,6580,10419,7956,10342,12906,7661,9683,11973,3805,11377,5278,6736,2381,5655,12778,7959,146,184,6348,6051,36],"class_list":["post-25095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-access","tag-camera","tag-case","tag-classified","tag-classified-documents","tag-court","tag-florida","tag-government","tag-investigation","tag-judge","tag-jury","tag-justice","tag-justice-department","tag-law","tag-law-school","tag-mar-a-lago","tag-millions","tag-one","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-quality","tag-school","tag-science","tag-security","tag-seized","tag-special-master","tag-truth","tag-united-states-president-donald-john-trump-jr","tag-us","tag-usc","tag-world"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25095"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51337,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25095\/revisions\/51337"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}