Trump has maintained without evidence that all of the records were declassified; his lawyers have not echoed that claim, though they have asserted that a president has absolute authority to declassify information.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's legal team has told a newly appointed independent arbiter that it does not want to answer his questions about the declassification status of the documents seized last month from the former president's Florida home, saying that issue could be part of Trump's defense if he's indicted.
Ahead of the status conference, Raymond Dearie, the special master, requested the two sides to submit a proposed agenda and also provided a draft plan for how he envisions the process moving forward over the next two months. The resistance to the judge's request was notable because it was Trump's lawyers, not the Justice Department, that had requested the appointment of a special master to conduct an independent review of the documents so that any material covered by claims of legal privilege could be segregated from the investigation — and because the former president's team's recalcitrance included an acknowledgment that the probe could be building toward an indictment.
“Otherwise, the Special Master process will have forced the Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment." the lawyers wrote.Also Tuesday, Trump's lawyers asked a federal appeals court to leave in place a different judge's order that temporarily barred the Justice Department from using the classified documents it seized as part of its criminal investigation. U.S.