In a filing to the court-appointed special master requested by Trump, his lawyers said the “time and place” to make such a disclosure would come in a motion in a criminal trial as an attempt to recover his assets. “Otherwise, the Special Master process would have required Plaintiff to fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement being apparent in the District Court’s order,” Trump’s legal team wrote. The resistance comes after Trump’s lawyers hinted that the former president declassified more than 300 documents recovered from his Florida home, but failed to make the full claim in court filings. “The administration’s position assumes that if a document is marked classified, it remains classified regardless of actions taken during President Trump’s tenure,” Trump’s legal team wrote in a filing last week. “There is no reasonable claim that the CEO’s declassification of documents requires executive branch bureaucratic approval,” they added. The Justice Department’s legal team picked up on Trump’s lawyer’s hint in its next filing. “Plaintiff primarily seeks to raise questions about the classified status of the records and their categorization under the Presidential Records Act (“PRA”). But plaintiff does not actually allege—much less provide evidence—that any of the seized classified-marked records have been declassified,” the department wrote. “Such possibilities should not be given weight unless the claimant provides sufficient evidence,” he added. Defense and National Security — Russia-Ukraine war tops agenda for UN meeting On The Money — Strong dollar: America’s gain is Europe’s pain Although presidents have broad authority to declassify records, doing so sets off a chain of events as the intelligence agencies that manage such records must take additional steps. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed a Freedom of Information Act request on Monday, asking for the “permanent” declassification order that Trump — outside of court filings — has pointed to to explain the dose of the file on his home. As Trump fought to prevent the Justice Department from reviewing the classified files, the department argued that it could have no possible claim to the documents, saying their classification labels show they are government, not personal, property and that Trump did not has reason to stop the executive power. offshoot from their review.
