Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch and Dan Whitcomb

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said it had evidence that classified documents were deliberately concealed from the FBI when it tried to retrieve them in June from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate, prompting its unprecedented search of his home.

In a 54-page filing, prosecutors on Tuesday laid out their evidence of obstruction of justice, alleging publicly for the first time that Trump aides both falsely certified in June that the former president had returned all the government records he had stored in his home after leaving the White House in January 2021.

It also revealed that Trump lawyers “explicitly prohibited government personnel from opening or looking inside any of the boxes” inside a storage room when FBI agents first traveled to his Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago resort in June to retrieve the records.

“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the department said in a filing in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida.

It released a photograph of some of the records found inside Trump’s home bearing classification markings, some of which refer to clandestine human sources.

The Justice Department’s filings come ahead of a Thursday court hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in West Palm Beach. She is weighing Trump’s request to appoint a special master who would conduct a privilege review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, many of which are labeled as classified.

A special master is an independent third party sometimes appointed by a court in sensitive cases to review materials potentially covered by attorney-client privilege to ensure investigators do not improperly view them.

A special master was appointed, for instance, in the searches of the homes and offices of two of Trump’s former attorneys: Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.

In Trump’s initial request to the court, his attorneys claimed that the former president wanted to protect materials that were subject to a legal doctrine known as executive privilege, which can shield some presidential communications.

Legal experts called that argument into question, saying it was illogical for a former president to claim he wanted to assert executive privilege against the executive branch itself.

Trump’s legal team later narrowed its request, asking for a privilege review without explicitly referring to executive privilege.

The Justice Department on Tuesday said it opposed the appointment of a special master.

Trump, prosecutors argued, lacks standing in the case because the records “do not belong to him.”

The Aug. 8 search of Trump’s home was a significant escalation of one of several federal and state investigations Trump is facing.

In a redacted affidavit underpinning the search released publicly by the department last week, an unidentified FBI agent said the agency reviewed and identified 184 documents “bearing classification markings” after Trump in January returned 15 boxes of government records sought by the U.S. National Archives.

After the National Archives discovered the classified material, some of which pertained to intelligence-gathering and clandestine human sources, it referred the matter to the FBI.

The Justice Department said on Tuesday it tried multiple times to get all the records back.

But ultimately, it developed evidence to suggest more materials remained at Mar-a-lago and had been hidden from investigators.

The FBI subsequently carted away 33 additional boxes and other items during its Aug 8. search, some of which were marked as “top secret” – the classification level reserved for the country’s most closely-held secrets.

Trump’s defenses for why he retained the materials have shifted, and he has not offered a reason for why he did not give all the records back.

He has previously claimed he declassified all the records, pointing to a president’s broad declassification powers.

However, Tuesday’s filing by the government denied this.

“When producing the documents, neither counsel nor the custodian asserted that the former President had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege,” prosecutors wrote.

They also noted that when Jay Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence division, visited Mar-a-lago with the three agents in June to recover additional records, Trump’s attorney handed over records “in a manner that suggested counsel believed that the documents were classified” by producing them in a “Redweld envelope” that was double-wrapped in tape.

Inside the envelope, the department said, were 38 unique documents with classification markings, 17 of which were “top secret,” 16 of which were “secret” and 5 marked as “confidential.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Scott Malone and Kim Coghill)

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WASHINGTON —Former President Donald Trump’s legal team is standing by its request for the appointment of a neutral third party — a so-called Special Master — to review materials seized by the FBI in its court-authorized search of Trump’s Mar-A-Lago estate on August 8.

The Justice Department, in a late night court filing Tuesday, argued against it.  A court hearing on the matter takes place Thursday.

The Justice Department claims classified documents were “likely concealed and removed” from former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as part of an effort to obstruct the federal investigation into the discovery of the government records.

The timeline laid out by the Justice Department made clear that the extraordinary search of Mar-a-Lago came only after other efforts to retrieve the records had failed and that it resulted from law enforcement suspicion that additional documents remained inside the property despite assurances by Trump representatives that a “diligent search” had accounted for all of the material.

It also included a picture of some of the seized documents with colored cover sheets indicating their classified status, perhaps as a way to rebut suggestions that whoever packed them or handled them at Mar-a-Lago could have easily failed to appreciate their sensitive nature.

The photo shows the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time magazine cover.

Though it contains significant new details on the investigation, the Justice Department filing does not resolve a core question that has driven public fascination with the investigation — why Trump held onto the documents after he left the White House and why he and his team resisted repeated efforts to give them back. In fact, it suggests officials may not have received an answer.

During a June 3 visit to Mar-a-Lago by FBI and Justice Department officials, the document states, “Counsel for the former President offered no explanation as to why boxes of government records, including 38 documents with classification markings, remained at the Premises nearly five months after the production of the Fifteen Boxes and nearly one-and-a-half years after the end of the Administration.”

That visit, which came weeks after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the records, receives substantial attention in the document and appears to be a key investigative focus.

But Townhall.com echos comments from supporters of the former president reporting, “They’re not nuclear secrets. It’s the classic example of the government overclassifying documents, which Mike Davis, a former law clerk to Neil Gorsuch, alluded to in the wake of this raid. We also know that federal agents absconded with records that shouldn’t have been taken, like those protected under attorney-client privilege. And again, classified documents are not an issue here. Trump was the president. He can declassify any record with absolute authority. The media is trying to make this seem like a Hillary Clinton-like story. It’s not.”

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(Reuters) – Conservative attorney L. Lin Wood said on Tuesday that he would testify before a grand jury investigating former U.S. President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the New York Times reported.

Wood, who has previously said that he had been subpoenaed by the grand jury, told the New York Times that he had been asked to take the witness stand by Fulton County District Attorney’s office.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Wood told the Times. “I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll go down and talk to them.”

Wood joins a growing number of Republicans who have been asked to appear before the grand jury to answer questions about Trump’s attempts to reverse his loss in Georgia, a battleground state that helped propel Democrat Joe Biden to the presidency.

(Reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Christopher Cushing)

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By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday filed its latest response to former president Donald Trump’s lawsuit over the FBI’s search of his home, though some of its filings were made under seal because they include more details about the items seized from his Florida estate.

“When producing the documents, neither counsel nor the custodian asserted that the former President had declassified the documents or asserted any claim of executive privilege,” the department argued in a filing in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida.

“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”

The Justice Department’s filings come ahead of a Thursday court hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in West Palm Beach. She is weighing Trump’s request to appoint a special master who would conduct a privilege review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, many of which are labeled as classified.

A special master is an independent third party sometimes appointed by a court in sensitive cases to review materials potentially covered by attorney-client privilege to ensure investigators do not improperly view them.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Kim Coghill)

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By Sarah N. Lynch and Dan Whitcomb

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department said on Tuesday it found evidence to suggest that documents removed from the White House when Donald Trump left office were later concealed at his Florida home to obstruct a federal investigation into their whereabouts.

A Trump lawyer “explicitly prohibited” FBI agents from looking in boxes in a storage room at Trump’s property during a June search, the department said in a court filing.

“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the department argued in a filing in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida.

The Justice Department’s filings come ahead of a Thursday court hearing before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon in West Palm Beach. She is weighing Trump’s request to appoint a special master who would conduct a privilege review of the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8, many of which are labeled as classified.

A special master is an independent third party sometimes appointed by a court in sensitive cases to review materials potentially covered by attorney-client privilege to ensure investigators do not improperly view them.

A special master was appointed, for instance, in the searches of the homes and offices of two of Trump’s former attorneys: Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.

In Trump’s initial request to the court, his attorneys claimed that the former president wanted to protect materials that were subject to a legal doctrine known as executive privilege, which can shield some presidential communications.

But legal experts called that argument into question, saying it was nonsensical for a former president to claim he wanted to assert executive privilege against the executive branch itself.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Scott Malone, Jonathan Oatis and Kim Coghill)

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By Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden condemned violent threats against FBI agents who searched predecessor Donald Trump’s home as “sickening,” as he called for more police funding and an assault weapons ban in Pennsylvania.

Launching his first of three visits in a week to the political battleground, Biden angrily denounced people who have lashed out at federal law enforcement officials involved in the unprecedented search of the Republican former president’s Florida home on Aug. 8.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said.

“I want to say it as clearly as I can. There is no place in this country – no place – for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place. None. Never. Period. I’m opposed to defunding the police. I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.”

Earlier this month, the FBI and U.S. Department of Homeland Security warned of an increase in threats following the search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, when agents removed what prosecutors described as 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked top secret, as part of a criminal investigation.

In recent weeks, Biden has largely sidestepped conversations about the investigation, with the White House saying the Justice Department operates independently. The Biden administration’s intelligence chief recently opened a probe into the national security risks of potential classified disclosure.

Biden has sharpened his attack on members of the Republican party devoted to Trump, a theme expected to play heavily in a major prime-time address during another visit to Pennsylvania on Thursday.

“Let me tell this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress. Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” he said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by Trump supports at the Capitol.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel pushed back against Biden’s message, saying in a statement on Tuesday: “The agenda of Biden Democrats has left Pennsylvania communities less safe, and this is why Pennsylvanians will be voting for a new direction in November.”

PENNSYLVANIA CRUCIAL

Tuesday’s visit to the small city of Wilkes-Barre gave Biden an opportunity to address a concern for voters in a critical state that helped lift the Democrat to the presidency and plays host to one of the closest-watched 2022 Senate races.

Trump, who is flirting with challenging Biden for a second term in 2024, is expected to hold a rally in the same city on Saturday.

As in 2020, when Biden was elected president, Pennsylvania will be a key battleground state in the November midterms and in the next presidential election.

It is home to one of a handful of competitive Senate races that will determine whether Democrats can hold onto their razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate.

John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and the state’s current lieutenant governor, did not join Biden for the event on Tuesday but planned to meet with him on Labor Day during his third visit to the state in a week.

Some Democratic candidates in the state and elsewhere have wrestled with whether to join Biden on the campaign trail, with some fearing his low approval ratings could drag down their campaigns.

Many Republican candidates are portraying Democrats as unwilling to fight growing crime rates in some parts of the country, trying to tie them to the “defund the police” movement that arose out of racial justice protests in 2020. Many Democrats, including Biden, have never supported slashing police funds.

The rate of U.S. gun deaths surged 35% in 2020 to the highest point since 1994, with especially deadly levels for young Black men, according to U.S. statistics published in May.

On Tuesday, Biden criticized Republican lawmakers who have opposed his plans to fund law enforcement and cut gun violence.

Biden has called for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban as well as $37 billion for crime prevention programs, with $13 billion to hire and train an additional 100,000 police officers over the next five years.

“We’re living in a country awash in weapons of war,” he said. “For God’s sake, what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone?”

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Berkrot and Stephen Coates)

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By Steve Holland and Jacqueline Thomsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican former President Donald Trump has added former Florida Solicitor General Chris Kise to his legal team in the case involving classified documents he stored at his Mar-a-Lago club, a source familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed a report by NBC News that Kise had been hired. Trump representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

A spokesperson at Kise’s law firm confirmed Kise had left but did not say where he was going. “Foley & Lardner LLP can confirm that Christopher M. Kise, formerly a partner in our Tallahassee office, has withdrawn from the firm.”

Kise will join a legal team that already includes Evan Corcoran, a former federal prosecutor who recently defended former Trump aide Steve Bannon in his contempt of Congress trial, and former prosecutor James Trusty.

Bannon was convicted on two counts for defying a congressional subpoena to appear before the U.S. House of Representatives panel investigating the Jan. 6., 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Another lawyer on Trump’s legal team, Lindsey Halligan, does not have any experience with federal prosecutions.

Cleta Mitchell, an attorney who worked on Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 election, was previously a partner at the same law firm as Kise – Foley & Lardner – in its Washington, D.C., office.

The firm said last year it was “concerned” after U.S. media reported that Mitchell was on a call in which Trump pressured Georgia’s top election official to “find” more votes for him to win the state. Mitchell resigned from the firm soon after.

An FBI search earlier this month at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, found more than 20 boxes of government records, including 11 sets of classified documents.

The Justice Department is investigating Trump for the unlawful retention of national defense information, a violation of the Espionage Act, and it is also investigating whether he tried to obstruct the criminal probe.

Trump’s legal team is due to face off against the Justice Department in federal court in West Palm Beach on Thursday, where Trump will ask U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon to appoint a special master to conduct a privilege review of the seized records.

Kise has argued cases before both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Florida Supreme Court. Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard, a friend of Kise, said Kise has the type of broad experience Trump needs.

“He’s no shrinking violet,” Ballard told Reuters.

In an unusual move last week, the Justice Department unsealed a heavily redacted copy of the legal document that outlined the evidence it used to persuade Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart to authorize a search warrant for Mar-a-Lago.

It revealed that Trump had retained records pertaining to the country’s most closely guarded secrets, including those involving intelligence gathering and clandestine human sources.

The U.S. National Archives first discovered Trump had retained classified materials in January, after he returned 15 boxes of presidential records he had kept at Mar-a-Lago.

(Reporting by Steve Holland and Jacqueline Thomsen; additional reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

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By Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden condemned violent threats against FBI agents who searched predecessor Donald Trump’s home as “sickening,” as he called for more police funding and an assault weapons ban in Pennsylvania.

Launching his first of three visits in a week to the political battleground, Biden angrily denounced people who have lashed out at federal law enforcement officials involved in the unprecedented search of the Republican former president’s Florida home on Aug. 8.

“It’s sickening to see the new attacks on the FBI, threatening the life of law enforcement agents and their families for simply carrying out the law and doing their job,” Biden said.

“I want to say it as clearly as I can. There is no place in this country – no place – for endangering the lives of law enforcement. No place. None. Never. Period. I’m opposed to defunding the police. I’m also opposed to defunding the FBI.”

Earlier this month, the FBI and U.S Department of Homeland Security warned of an increase in threats following the search of Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago, when agents removed what prosecutors described as 11 sets of classified documents, including some marked top secret, as part of a criminal investigation.

In recent weeks, Biden has largely sidestepped conversations about the investigation, with the White House saying the Justice Department operates independently even though the risk of disclosing sensitive information has national-security implications.

Biden has sharpened his attack on members of the Republican party devoted to Trump, a theme expected to play heavily in a major prime-time address during another visit to Pennsylvania on Thursday.

“Let me tell this to my MAGA Republican friends in Congress. Don’t tell me you support law enforcement if you won’t condemn what happened on the 6th,” he said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by Trump supports at the Capitol.

PENNSYLVANIA CRUCIAL

Tuesday’s visit to the small city of Wilkes-Barre gave Biden an opportunity to address a key concern for voters in a critical state that helped lift the Democrat to the presidency and plays host to one of the closest-watched 2022 Senate races.

Trump, who is flirting with challenging Biden for a second term in 2024, is expected to hold a rally in the same city on Saturday.

As in 2020, when Biden was elected president, Pennsylvania will be a key battleground state in the November midterms and in the next presidential election.

It is home to one of a handful of competitive Senate races that will determine whether Democrats can hold onto their razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate.

John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania and the state’s current lieutenant governor, did not join Biden for the event on Tuesday but planned to meet with him on Labor Day during his third visit to the state in a week.

Some Democratic candidates in the state and elsewhere have wrestled with whether to join Biden on the campaign trail, with some fearing his low approval ratings could drag down their campaigns.

Many Republican candidates are portraying Democrats as unwilling to fight growing crime rates in some parts of the country, trying to tie them to the “defund the police” movement that arose out of racial justice protests in 2020. Many Democrats, including Biden, have never supported slashing police funds.

The rate of U.S. gun deaths surged 35% in 2020 to the highest point since 1994, with especially deadly levels for young Black men, according to U.S. statistics published in May.

On Tuesday, Biden criticized Republican lawmakers who have opposed his plans to fund law enforcement and cut gun violence.

Biden has called for Congress to pass an assault weapons ban as well as $37 billion for crime prevention programs, with $13 billion to hire and train an additional 100,000 police officers over the next five years.

“We’re living in a country awash in weapons of war,” he said. “For God’s sake, what’s the rationale for these weapons outside of a war zone?”

(Reporting by Nandita Bose and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons, Jonathan Oatis and Bill Berkrot)

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By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden’s public approval rating fell modestly this week, a poor sign for his Democratic Party’s hopes in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll completed on Tuesday.

The two-day national poll found that 38% of Americans approve of Biden’s job performance.

While Biden’s approval rating hit 41% last week, it has been mostly below 40% since mid-June despite a string of Democratic legislative victories that Biden’s allies hope will help them defend their narrow congressional majorities in November.

Democrats are expected to lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November and possibly the Senate as well.

Even with control only of the House, Republicans would be able to bring Biden’s legislative agenda to a halt and launch potentially politically damaging investigations.

Biden’s overall approval rating has been below 50% for over a year as Americans have grappled with high rates of inflation and an economy scarred by the COVID-19 health crisis. Biden’s lowest ratings of 36% – in four weekly polls in May, June and July – rivaled the lows of his predecessor, Donald Trump, whose popularity bottomed out at 33% in December 2017.

When poll respondents this week were asked to rank the nation’s biggest problems, the economy topped concerns, with a third of Republicans and a quarter of Democrats pointing to it as the top issue.

For Republicans, the next most pressing problems were immigration and crime, each of which topped concerns for about one in 10 Republicans.

Among Democrats, about one in eight saw the environment as the top issue, and about one in 10 pointed to the end of national abortion rights. Reuters/Ipsos this week added abortion rights to a list of concerns for Americans to rank, a list that also includes immigration and healthcare, as the issue has attracted more attention since a June U.S. Supreme Court decision ending the nationwide constitutional right to abortion.

The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted online in English throughout the United States, gathered responses from 1,005 adults, including 449 Democrats and 357 Republicans. It has a credibility interval – a measure of precision – of four percentage points.

(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Scott Malone and Rosalba O’Brien)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will no longer allow political appointees to go to fundraisers and other campaign events under restrictions handed down Tuesday that are aimed at maintaining the department’s independence from politics.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, who is currently overseeing investigations including the FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s home and the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, said in a memo that the restrictions are to ensure that politics “both in fact and appearance” won’t affect the way the law is enforced or how inquiries are carried out.

Appointees, hired under presidential administrations rather than making long careers at the Justice Department, have been allowed to attend political events passively on their personal time with prior approval. The new policy bans attendance altogether.

It also removes an exception that had allowed people with close family members running for office to attend political events during presidential election years, and it bars attending such events on the evening of Election Day.

“It is critical that we hold ourselves to the highest ethical standards to avoid even the appearance of political influence as we carry out the department’s mission,” Garland wrote.

On his first day in office more than a year ago, Garland vowed to prioritize the Justice Department’s political independence after the departure of Trump, who had insisted on officials’ personal loyalty.

More recently, Trump and his allies have sought to cast the Aug. 9 search at Mar-a-Lago — part of an investigation into the removal of classified records — as a political weaponization of the Justice Department. A rash of online threats against federal agents followed.

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For more AP coverage of Donald Trump-related investigations, go to https://apnews.com/hub/trump-investigations.

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