A motion submitted by the ex-president’s lawyers argues some materials seized by the FBI could be subject to executive privilege
“If he’s acknowledging that he’s in possession of documents that would have any colorable claim of executive privilege, those are by definition presidential records and belong at the National Archives,” said Asha Rangappa, a former“And so it’s not clear that executive privilege would even be relevant to the particular crime he’s being investigated for and yet in this filing, he basically admits that he is in possession of them, which is what the government is trying to establish,” Rangappa said.
The reasoning, former US attorneys say, is that there could be communications seized by the FBI that are privileged, but not used in furtherance of a crime, and even if the justice department wanted to use them in its investigation, it should be precluded from doing so. The search warrant for Mar-a-Lago listed obstruction for the statutes potentially violated, though it was not clear whether that was obstruction of the investigation into the very retrieval of government documents from Mar-a-Lago or for another, separate investigation.” detailed the multiple steps the justice department took to initially retrieve 15 boxes in January, additional materials in June, and then 26 boxes when the FBI conducted its search.
But despite taking custody of documents responsive to the subpoena, the justice department learned there may have been additional documents marked as classified, and issued a subpoena on 22 June demanding security camera footage of the hallway outside where the materials were being stored.
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