Court Filing Reveals Details About What FBI Took at Mar-a-Lago (Newsmax)
By Charlie McCarthy | Thursday, 06 October 2022 09:18 AM EDT
The FBI seized a combination of government, business, and personal documents when agents raided former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home, a recently unsealed court filing showed.
Thousands of documents included analysis about pardon requests, call notes marked with a presidential seal, and retainer agreements for lawyers and accountants, Bloomberg reported, based on a recently unsealed Aug. 30 report from the Justice Department.
Among 383 pages flagged to be returned to the former president were IRS forms and other tax-related documents, legal work invoices, and lawyer-retainer contracts.
That set of documents also included a settlement between a Trump golf entity and the PGA Tour, communication about Trump's resignation from the Screen Actors Guild, and a nondisclosure agreement and contract related to Trump's Save America PAC, Bloomberg reported.
A judge had ordered that the lists of seized materials remain under seal, but they appeared to be inadvertently posted to the public court docket, Bloomberg said.
The logs no longer are visible publicly.
A "Privilege Review Team" reviewed the list of seized items and divided potentially privileged material into two categories — government records/public documents, and items that should be returned to Trump.
Bloomberg reported that the first set of 137 pages consisted mostly of records, public documents, or communications from outside parties. One 39-page document titled "The President's Calls" featured handwritten notes and the presidential seal in the upper left corner.
The second group included a "medical letter" to a doctor and a wide array of materials referring to Trump's numerous legal entanglements through the years.
In the Aug. 30 report, DOJ explained how the privilege review team did the initial search at Mar-a-Lago, Bloomberg reported. The team was assigned to flag documents that might be covered by attorney-client privilege.
Trump's legal team on Tuesday requested the Supreme Court intervene in the legal battle concerning the review documents seized Aug. 8 from his Mar-a-Lago home. The lawyers asked the justices to vacate the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that said the DOJ could continue using classified documents seized from the president's home for their investigation.
The former president, who has blasted the DOJ and FBI for what he says was an illegal raid, on Wednesday told the National Hispanic Leadership Conference that the bureau's assault has brought billions of dollars in free publicity to his Florida home.
"Has anyone heard about the document hoax? Helicopters flying over Mar-a-Lago," Trump said in Miami. "Well, they've given us about $5 billion worth of free publicity, I will say."