The ex-president fights back. There could be a special representative.
The processing of the raid on the luxury villa of Donald Trump turns into a tussle over the proper legal course of action in this unusual case. Over the weekend, a judge in the US state of Florida announced that she might have a special representative to review the FBI-Start investigations against the ex-president.
The magazine “Politico” had reported that the documents found in Trump’s villa and classified as secret were being evaluated by the US intelligence services. Trump himself had previously asked the court to appoint a specially appointed examiner of an investigation by the state. Until then, the evaluation of the papers found on him should rest.
Did unauthorized persons have access?
The US secret services want to clarify whether national security risks could have arisen from the storage of secret documents in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago villa in Palm Beach, Florida. This was reported by “Politico” on Saturday, citing a letter from secret service coordinator Avril Haines to high-ranking employees. “The Department of Justice and the Office of the US Intelligence Coordinator are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered in the search,” Haines wrote.
According to the report, the secret services could also check whether unauthorized persons had access to the documents. This could be of criminal relevance. Haines is the intelligence coordinator in the administration of Trump’s successor Joe Biden an.
On Friday it had US Department of Justice partially made public the basis on which the ex-president’s apartments were searched on August 8th. This revealed that Trump had previously returned numerous confidential, classified, and top-secret documents to the National Archives. Since Trump kept the documents in his private estate until then, he could have broken the law.
The 45th US President is determined to delay or even block the next steps by the US authorities: Trump had already filed a lawsuit last Monday. Among other things, the Republican wants to achieve the appointment of a neutral auditor. After the release of new details about the investigation by the US Department of Justice on Friday, Trump renewed his request.
A so-called special master should oversee the investigation of the documents seized during the operation at the Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, according to a motion filed by his lawyers. Until then, “the US government should no longer participate in the examination of the documents”.
25 top secret documents
A judge handling the explosive case, Aileen Cannon, announced that a hearing would be held on Thursday. It was she who now promised a special representative to review the FBI investigation. A side note: Cannon was appointed judge by Trump himself in 2020.
On Friday, the US Department of Justice, by order of another judge, released the document on the basis of which the search on the private property Mar-a-Lago was authorized. About half of the 30+ pages have been blacked out to protect sensitive information.
Other details also became known: Trump sent 15 boxes of documents from Mar-a-Lago to the National Archives at the beginning of the year. 14 of them contained confidential and partly top secret documents. 184 documents in it were classified: 67 as confidential, 92 as secret and 25 as top secret. There were handwritten notes on some – probably by Trump himself.
(WHAT/zot)