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In a late-night filing on Aug. 30 in response to former President Donald Trump’s motion for an independent party to scrutinize documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate, the Department of Justice (DOJ) urged a judge not to grant the motion.
Much attention has focused on a photograph attached to the DOJ’s filing. The photograph shows a number of documents marked Top Secret laid out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. The DOJ’s accompanying filing claims that the items in the photograph were recovered from the “45 office,” which it defines as “the former President’s office space at the Premises”.
Trump and his legal team have insisted that he declassified the documents in his possession and that therefore it does not matter what the markings on the papers are. DOJ appears to have been prepared for this argument.
While the photograph was likely included in the filing for its PR value–evidenced by the fact that it is currently on the front page of every news outlet–the DOJ’s real focus appears to be elsewhere, specifically on a grand jury subpoena dated May 11, 2022, and a certification signed by a Trump lawyer on June 3, 2022. Both these documents are included in the new filing.
The subpoena demands that “Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump” hand over “any and all documents … bearing classification markings, including but not limited to the following.” The subpoena goes on to specify the various classification markings used by the U.
