Former President Trump and his legal team filed a motion Monday evening seeking an independent review of the records seized by the FBI during its “unprecedented” and “unnecessary” raid on Mar-a-Lago earlier this month, claiming that the decision to search his private residence just months before the 2022 midterm elections “involved political calculations aimed at diminishing the leading voice in the Republican Party, President Trump.”
A motion filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida states Trump and his legal team are seeking an order assigning a special master to review the records taken during the search; stonewalling the government from further reviewing seized materials until a special master is appointed. This would require the Justice Department to hand over a more detailed receipt for property and force the government to return any item seized that was not included in the search warrant.
Trump explained the motion is “strongly asserting” his rights, “including under the Fourth Amendment of our Constitution, regarding the unnecessary, unwarranted, and unAmerican Break-In by dozens of FBI agents, and others, of my home, Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida.”
“They demanded that the security cameras be turned off, a request we rightfully denied. They prevented my attorneys from observing what was being taken in the raid, saying ‘absolutely not,'” said the former president. “They took documents covered by attorney-client and executive privilege, which is not allowed. They took my passports. They even brought a ‘safe cracker’ and successfully broke into my personal safe, which revealed…nothing!”
Trump said he is “now demanding that the Department of ‘Justice’ be instructed to immediately STOP the review of documents illegally seized from my home.”
“ALL documents have been previously declassified,” Trump continued. “We are demanding the appointment of a SPECIAL MASTER to oversee the handling of the materials taken in the raid. We are further demanding that the DOJ be forced to turn over a REAL, without ‘plants,’ inventory of my property that was taken and disclose where that property is now located.”
Trump let the FBI know that he and his legal team are “demanding that all items wrongfully taken from my home be IMMEDIATELY returned.”
