Trump has failed to show he declassified docs seized from Mar-a-Lago, DOJ tells appeals court

Attorneys for Donald Trump have repeatedly failed to show that the former president declassified government records that were taken from his Florida home as part of a criminal investigation, the Department of Justice told a federal appeals court.

The Justice Department made that argument late Tuesday as it sought to resume its review of records marked classified that were seized from Trump’s Palm Beach resort home Mar-a-Lago in an FBI raid last month.

The DOJ’s filing in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit swung back at Trump’s lawyers, who earlier Tuesday asked the court to preserve a ruling from a lower federal judge that blocked the government from examining the seized documents.

Trump “again implies that he could have declassified the records before leaving office,” federal prosecutors wrote.

“As before, however, Plaintiff conspicuously fails to represent, much less show, that he actually took that step,” they wrote, referring to Trump.

The DOJ lawyers added that Trump “is now resisting” a request by a court-appointed special master for him to provide evidence that he declassified records that were seized.

“In any event, Plaintiff’s effort to raise questions about classification status is a red herring,” the prosecutors argued. “Even if Plaintiff could show that he declassified the records at issue, there would still be no justification for restricting the government’s use of evidence at the center of an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Lawyers for Trump and the DOJ appeared in Brooklyn, New York, on Tuesday afternoon for a conference with the special master, U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie. He was picked for the role by Trump and appointed by Cannon, who herself had been nominated by Trump.

But in Tuesday’s court conference, Dearie expressed skepticism toward Trump’s lawyers about which, if any, of the seized Mar-a-Lago records had been declassified.

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