Aug 14, 2022
Washington – FBI seizes privileged Trump records during raid; DOJ opposes request for independent review.
Sources familiar with the investigation told Fox News Saturday that the former president’s team was informed that boxes labeled A-14, A-26, A-43, A-13, A-33, and a set of documents—all seen on the final page of the FBI’s property receipt —contained information covered by attorney-client privilege.
The FBI seized classified records from Trump’s Palm Beach home during its unprecedented Monday morning raid, including some marked as top secret.
But the former president is disputing the classification, saying the records have been declassified.
It is unclear, at this point, if the records include communications between the former president and his private attorneys, White House counsel during the Trump administration, or a combination.
Sources told Fox News that, due to attorney-client privilege, Trump’s team asked the Justice Department for their position on whether they would support a third party, independent special master to review those records, but sources told Fox News that the DOJ notified Trump’s team that they would oppose that request.
The Justice Department and the FBI declined to comment.
A spokesman for Trump did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment.
The search warrant and property receipt for the FBI’s Monday raid of Mar-a-Lago were unsealed by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Friday afternoon.
The warrant gave agents the authority to seize “all physical documents and records constituting evidence, contraband, fruits of crime, or other items illegally possessed” in violation of U.S. Code, including documents with classification markings and presidential records created between Jan. 20, 2017 and Jan. 20, 2021.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced this week that he personally approved the request to obtain a warrant to search the former president’s private residence.
Trump’s office received a grand jury subpoena this spring for classified documents he allegedly took from the White House when he left office in 2021. A source close to Trump told Fox News that the former president cooperated with the subpoena by turning over documents to the FBI.
According to the source, a subpoena was issued to a “custodian of the president,” and was related to the materials that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was trying to collect after claiming Trump improperly took those classified records with him from Washington D.C. to Mar-a-Lago.
Those investigators toured the area of the Florida resort where some documents were stored, then briefly viewed and took custody of a small amount of potentially sensitive material.
Separate sources told News reports that federal investigators had spoken with at least one person who relayed the possibility of more sensitive national security material in that storage room and other areas of the property.
FBI officials, that day, asked to see a storage facility where the records were located. The FBI asked that staff put a lock on the storage room, which they later did.
Trump received that subpoena two months prior to the FBI’s unprecedented raid on a former president of the United States’ private residence — which took place early Monday morning.
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