Donald Trump may still be hiding more top-secret documents he took from the White House at the end of his presidency Department of Justice officials believe, a report claims.
A top DoJ official, Jay I Bratt, informed the former president’s lawyers that the government believes he has not yet returned all the material in his possession, two people briefed on the matter told The New York Times.
It is unclear what action, if any, the DoJ may take to retrieve the documents, or what evidence they may have that Mr Trump has them, according to the newspaper.
“The weaponized Department of Justice and the politicized FBI are spending millions and millions of American tax dollars to perpetuate witch hunt after witch hunt,” Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr Trump, told The New York Times.
Federal agents raided Mr Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in August and found more than 10,000 government documents, more than 100 of which were marked classified or highly classified.
Mr Trump was supposed to turn over all the materials to the National Archives when he left office in 2021, and the federal government has spent the past 18 months trying to convince him to do just that.
The FBI raided Mr Trump’s home on 8 August after the proposed search was approved by a federal judge and with the knowledge of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Mr Trump initially claimed that FBI agents had planted evidence at his home, but has since said in interviews that he legally declassified the material in his mind, a right he says every president has.
The news emerged just days after Mr Trump filed an emergency appeal at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking justices to look at part of an appeals court order dealing with the documents.
That appeal came after the Atlanta-based US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit said federal investigators could review the documents as part of their criminal investigation.
Following the search, a district court blocked investigators from reviewing the documents and at Mr Trump’s request appointed a special master to determine if any could be kept away from the government.
As president, Mr Trump appointed three associate justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett but the country’s highest court still refused to hear attempts to challenge the 2020 election results.
