Government Hasn’t Proven Trump Held Classified Records: Trump Lawyers
U.S. officials have not proven that former President Donald Trump held classified records, lawyers for the ex-president said in a new filing on Sept. 20.
The government “presupposes that the documents it claims are classified are, in fact, classified and their segregation is inviolable. However, the Government has not yet proven this critical fact,” the lawyers wrote to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
They pointed to an executive order from former President Barack Obama, which remained in place through the Trump presidency and gives the president authority to declassify any document, and said Trump had the absolute authority to declassify any records.
Materials marked classified were found at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home by FBI agents executing a search warrant in August, and the government has repeatedly described them as classified records.
“The district court has entered an unprecedented order enjoining the Executive Branch’s use of its own highly classified records in a criminal investigation with direct implications for national security,” U.S. lawyers said in a recent motion to the Circuit Court.
Request for Partial Stay
The lawyers were asking for a partial stay of an order entered by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee who appointed a special master to review the seized records and ordered the government to halt using the seized records for anything apart from a national security review.
The Department of Justice asked the court to allow it to continue using the records for a criminal investigation into Trump.
Its argument in part hinged on whether Trump has standing to claim legitimate access to materials marked classified. U.S. lawyers said he did not “because those records are government property, over which the Executive Branch has exclusive control and in which Plaintiff has no property interest.” Executive privilege claims cannot work because
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