Lawyers for former President Donald Trump harped on the recently released affidavit for the Mar-a-Lago raid, arguing it bolsters their case for relief in the Justice Department‘s inquiry on Trump’s handling of documents.
Shading the DOJ for redacting large swaths of the affidavit that laid out the legal justifications for the Aug. 8 search and seizure, the lawyers argued that the affidavit raised “more questions than answers” in a supplemental motion for their request for a special master to supervise the DOJ review of the Mar-a-Lago material.
TRUMP FILES SUPPLEMENTAL MOTION SEEKING APPOINTMENT OF SPECIAL MASTER
“The Redacted Affidavit underscores why this Motion should be granted, as it provides almost no information that would allow Movant to understand why the raid took place, or what was taken from his home. The few lines that are unredacted raise more questions than answers,” Trump’s team wrote in the supplemental motion.
Earlier in the week, Trump’s legal team filed a motion requesting the appointment of a special master and court relief to block the DOJ from combing through the evidence trove. A judge overseeing the case demanded Trump lawyers answer a number of questions she had by Friday, which prompted the supplemental motion.
That same day, the DOJ released the affidavit for the raid, giving the Trump legal team the ability to cite the hotly anticipated document in their motion. The supplemental filing points to a section in the affidavit that cited the existence “Presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain[ing] at the PREMISES,” as part of the basis for the raid.
“This provides the deeply troubling prospect that President Trump’s home was raided under a pretense of a suspicion that Presidential records were on his property – even though the Presidential Records Act is not a criminally-enforceable statute,” Trump’s lawyers argued.
Roughly 184 documents collected from Mar-a-Lago during a January transfer with the National Archives and Records Administration contained material that bore classified markings and ultimately led to the Aug. 8 raid, according to the affidavit. In that batch, 67 documents were marked “confidential,” 92 were marked “secret,” and 25 were designated “top secret.”
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At least one lawyer on Trump’s legal team, Christina Bobb, is facing scrutiny for a document she signed asserting that all classified material from Mar-a-Lago had been given to the government, the New York Times reported.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and his representatives have insisted that he declassified the material at Mar-a-Lago. He has denounced the raid as an “unAmerican break-in” and a “witch hunt.”
