A federal judge in Washington DC declined to block Donald Trump or their legal team contempt as a court Justice Department The request was made during the court hearing on Friday ABC News first reported,
The judge instead urged the Justice Department and the Trump legal team to resolve the dispute themselves.
Judge Beryl Howell was asked by prosecutors to hold the former president’s team in contempt over their failure to fully comply in May. sizer For documents with classified markings that were directed to the custodian of Trump’s records.
Friday’s proceedings were under seal and not public, despite requests for access by the news organizations’ lawyers.
cnn reporter Prosecutors, including Justice Department counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt, and former President Trump’s lawyers were seen leaving the courthouse just before 3:30 p.m.
“The President and his lawyers will continue to be transparent and cooperative in the face of a heavily armed and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of Justice,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
“If the ‘Justice’ department can go after President Trump, they will certainly come after any American they disagree with,” Mr Cheung said. “President Trump is the only one standing in the way of the un-American weaponization of law enforcement.”
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment on the matter.
100 or so documents FBI taken from mar-a-lago The 37 in August were on top of the impeachment classification markings that Trump lawyers obtained during a June visit to the house. In addition, 15 boxes containing approximately 184 classified documents were recovered in January by the National Archives and Records Administration.
As the Associated Press reports, it is likely that the Justice Department has not yet recovered all the classified material.
The FBI’s August search of the home came after investigators developed evidence that additional sensitive documents remained there, even after Trump’s representatives certified in June that all classified documents requested in a Justice Department subpoena had been found. Was and was returned.
The Trump attorney who made this representation and who was serving as his custodian of records at the time, Christina Bobb, met with the FBI in October. She told investigators she did not draft the letter, but another Trump lawyer said she did in fact, asking her to sign it in her role as a designated custodian of Trump’s records. was, according to a person familiar with his account.
before this vTwo additional documents with k classification markings were found during a recent search of a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Florida, which was arranged by Mr Trump’s lawyers. Those items were then turned over to the FBI.