In a 21-page motion filed Monday morning attorneys for Donald Trump say they oppose the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s request a federal judge lift her stay to allow them to continue to review just the 100 or so classified and top secret documents it seized during the execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.
Rather than acknowledge the documents are the property of the U.S. Government, Trump’s attorneys falsely tell a federal district judge Trump appointed that it’s merely an issue of “storage” of items that belong to the former president.
“In what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control, the Government wrongfully seeks to criminalize the possession by the 45th President of his own Presidential and personal records,” the motion reads. It puts the words “classified records” in scare quotes, suggesting it is sticking with Trump’s previous claim he declassified all the documents, which too is reportedly false.
“Critically, the former President has sole discretion to classify a record as personal or Presidential,” the motion claims, which as Politico’s Kyle Cheney notes, “is just outright ‘false’ when you stick the word ‘former’ in it,” as former presidents have no legal authority to declassify anything.
The Washington Post adds Trump’s actor news are “suggesting that some of the documents in question may not be classified and that Trump may have the right to keep them in his possession.”
This is a breaking news and developing story.