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Former President Donald Trump filed a motion Monday demanding federal investigators stop going through material seized from his Mar-a-Lago mansion earlier this month until a neutralspecial master could be appointed to review the records.
The 27-page filing in Florida federal court also asked for the federal government to provide more detail about what was seized in the Aug. 8 raid on the 45th president’s Palm Beach estate and demanded the Justice Departmentreturn any item not covered by the search warrant.
“We are 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 said in a statement on his Truth Social platform soon after the motion was filed.
The former president went on to call the FBI’s raid an “unnecessary, unwarranted, and un American break-in” that violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The filing, which is the first by Trump’s side since the raid, suggests the FBI search was politically motivated – calling it a “shockingly aggressive move” that was undertaken with “no understanding of the distress that it would cause most Americans.”
“Law enforcement is a shield that protects Americans. It cannot be used as a weapon for political purposes,” the filing said. “Therefore, we seek judicial assistance in the aftermath of an unprecedented and unnecessary raid on President Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.”
The complaint notably described Trump as the “clear frontrunner” in the 2024 GOP presidential primary and general election “should he decide to run” – adding that “politics cannot be allowed to impact the administration of justice.”
Elsewhere, Trump’s attorneys argued that the more than two dozen boxes of documents seized in the raid were “presumptively” covered by executive privilege.
“This matter has captured the attention of the American public. Merely ‘adequate’ safeguards are not acceptable when the matter at hand involves not only the constitutional rights of President Trump, but also the presumption of executive privilege,” the filing said.
Trump’s complaint claims there was no reason for the FBI to raid Mar-a-Lago because the former president had already been cooperating for month as the feds scrutinized the presence of classified documents at his Florida home.
According to his complaint, the raid came two months after Trump and his attorneys “voluntarily” cooperated with a May 11 grand jury subpoena to turn over additional documents.
Trump “invited the FBI to come to Mar-a-Lago” to retrieve the documents June 3 – and even greeted the agents in the dining room, the filing said. The FBI officials were then shown the basement storage room where boxes of documents and other memorabilia from Trump’s four years in the White House were kept.
The document claimed that after seeing the room, one FBI agent told the Trump team: “Thank you. You did not need to show us the storage room, but we appreciate it. Now it all makes sense.”