WASHINGTON — Former President Donald Trump’s legal team said in a court filing Monday that classified materials should not be excluded from the special master’s review of documents found during an FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago estate, suggesting that some of the documents may not be classified and that Trump may have the right to keep them in his possession.
“The Government has not proven these records remain classified,” Trump’s attorney stated in the filing. “That issue is to be determined later.”
This is the first time Trump’s team has hinted in court that the former president may have declassified the documents while in office, though they never directly state whether he did. Trump and his allies have made that argument on social media and cable news, but the U.S. intelligence community has indicated normal declassification procedures didn’t take place. Normally, if a president declassifies American secrets, the intelligence community would be informed so it could change intelligence-gathering methods or move confidential human sources.
