Special Inspector of Mar-a-Lago Documents Asks Trump to Substantiate His Allegation that the FBI 'Planted' Evidence

By

Dareh

News

The special inspector appointed to review the documents that the FBI seized in the mansion of former President Donald Trump in Florida set a deadline of Friday, September 30, to support his accusation that federal agents planted evidence when they searched Mar-a-Lago last August 8.

Following the search of the Palm Beach resort, Trump and his attorneys have publicly implied on multiple occasions, without providing evidence, that evidence was planted by FBI agents while searching his property.

“Is anyone seeding information?” Trump wrote on his Truth Social social media platform on August 12.

Retired New York Superior District Judge Raymond J. Dearie, who was appointed a special supervisor by a court last week, ordered the government Thursday to deliver a copy to Trump's lawyers by Monday of all the articles. unclassified that were seized at his residence.

Pages from an FBI property list of items seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate and released by the Justice Department, Friday, Sept. 2, 2022.Jon Elswick/AP

He ordered Trump's legal team to file a "declaration or affidavit" of inventory items removed from Mar-a-Lago that "the plaintiff asserts were not seized on the premises," meaning items that someone else placed there.

Dearie also asked Trump's attorneys to identify items they say were seized from him but are not in authorities' inventory.

"This release will be Plaintiff's last opportunity to raise any factual dispute as to the completeness and accuracy of the detailed property inventory," the judge wrote.

Both parties are due to appear in court on October 6 to hear an account of the status of the case.

[“Irreparable damage.”

The US asks not to further delay the investigation into the Trump documents]

It is not the first time that Dearie, who was proposed by Trump's lawyers to act as a special inspector, has pressed the former president's team to give evidence of the accusations they have made in the case.

For example, Dearie asked Trump's lawyers for more information on which of the more than 100 sensitive documents federal agents found at Mar-a-Lago might have been declassified.

Although Trump has publicly claimed that he could declassify materials by thinking about it, his lawyers' arguments in court have been more limited.

In the filings, they suggested that at least some of the documents he took from the White House to his Florida residence in January 2021 had been declassified, but never actually claimed that was the case.

These are the legal fronts that former President Donald Trump has open

Sept.

22, 202203:10

Trump's lawyers told the judge in a letter Monday that they didn't want to release that information yet because they didn't want to be forced to prematurely compromise their defense.

That issue, however, became moot on Wednesday after a federal appeals court ruled against the special inspector being able to review the classified-marked documents.