WEST PALM BEACH, Sept 2 — An increasingly high-stakes standoff between Donald Trump and US federal investigators landed in court Thursday, after days of headline-grabbing revelations surrounding highly classified documents seized by the FBI from the former president’s Florida home.
Prosecutors on Tuesday disclosed much of the evidence against the Republican former president recovered from the search of his Mar-a-Lago residence in south Florida last month. The government filing also stated that FBI agents located classified documents in Trump’s desk drawers with his passports. And the claim of obstructing the FBI search heaps further legal pressure on the former president, who denies all wrongdoing.In court on Thursday, one of Trump’s lawyers described the controversy as comparable to a fuss over an “overdue library book,” according to US media outlets.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, may scrutinise the certification that his lawyers delivered to the Justice Department on June 3, falsely stating that all files with classified markings had been returned.