West Palm Beach, United States
Following days of news-grabbing revelations regarding highly sensitive information the FBI took from the former president's Florida home, a high-stakes confrontation between Donald Trump and US federal investigators ended up in court on Thursday.
Trump is requesting that a third party be appointed to review the government's screening of the sensitive documents to see if any contained "very personal material" that needed to be returned or were protected by official secrecy procedures.
The motion has considerably increased the stakes in the lawsuit, and a federal court in Florida indicated on Thursday that it would make a decision at an undisclosed later time. This announcement sparked a sharp retort from the Justice Department.
The majority of the evidence against the Republican former president found during the search of his Mar-a-Lago home in south Florida last month was made public by the prosecution on Tuesday.
Despite a grand jury's demand that Trump produces materials that were removed from the White House in January 2021 in May, the officials claimed they had proof of attempts to conceal secret documents.
They added that some of the documents were so secret that federal agents and employees of the Justice Department need higher security clearances just to view the information.
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Trump's desk drawers contained passports and secret documents, according to the federal complaint.
According to the department, "the location of the passports is relevant evidence in an investigation of unauthorized retention and mishandling of national defence information."
The document is the most thorough account to date of an 18-month attempt to retrieve hundreds of secret documents that were wrongfully removed to Mar-a-Lago after Trump left office.
Additional legal pressure is placed on the former president, who maintains his innocence, by the allegation that he obstructed the FBI's investigation.
(with inputs from agencies)