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The US Justice Department announced on Thursday that it was contesting a Florida judge’s decision to block access to thousands of documents, including top-secret files, that had been taken from the house of former president Donald Trump.
The department claimed that the federal court Judge Aileen Cannon’s order on Monday to sequester all the documents for examination by a third-party “special master” hampered its ability to carry out a criminal investigation into Trump’s possession of the secret documents.
It requested that Cannon lift her freeze on the slightly more than 100 classified documents that had been taken during the August 8 raid on Trump’s Florida home and to prevent any special master designated to look into the confiscated materials from having access to them.
According to the department’s submission, Trump has no claim to the documents because they are a part of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation into the unauthorised possession of national security secrets, which is covered by the Espionage Act.
It stated: “The government’s current inquiry specifically focuses on the secret records.”
Numerous thousands of government documents, including extremely sensitive information, were retrieved during the historic FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence last month in Palm Beach, Florida.
Numerous boxes containing a large portion of it were mingled with Trump’s personal documents and other items like apparel and news articles.
Trump asked Cannon last week to protect all of it from being examined or used in investigations, citing his executive privilege as a former president, attorney-client privilege over any personal legal documents in the trove, and constitutional protections against unjustified searches.
Cannon issued a halt, stating that a special master could be appointed to conduct an independent review of what Trump could actually claim privilege over and what the government could keep.
The government has insisted that Trump has no right to any official government records held by the National Archives, particularly classified materials.
It has not specified what is contained in the classified documents, but media reports indicate that some are extremely restricted, with the Washington Post reporting that one dealing with a foreign country’s nuclear programme and nuclear defences.
The Justice Department justified the raid by citing the law on retaining defence materials and the law against destroying government records.
It also charged Trump with obstruction of justice after Trump and his lawyers told the FBI in June that there were no more government or classified records at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump accused the FBI and Justice Department of a “document hoax” in a social media post, and praised Cannon as “brilliant and courageous.”
