Donald Trump planning to withhold two folders seized by FBI during raid on Mar-a-Lago

Former US President Donald Trump is attempting to withhold at least two folders marked as containing correspondence with the National Archives from the US Justice Department that contain the signed sheets seized by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago resort.  “The former US president’s privilege assertions over the folders, which appear to have direct relevance to the criminal investigation into whether he retained national defence information and obstructed justice, are significant as they represent an effort to exclude the items from the inquiry and keep them confidential," the Justice Department noted, according to a Guardian report. 

Documents 'illegally carried from the White House'

The US Department of Justice also relayed to the lawyers for Trump that the ex-US president may not have turned in all the documents that he may have illegally carried from the White House. In this regard, the DoJ head of counterintelligence operations, Jay Bratt, communicated with Trump's attorneys “in recent weeks:, the paper revealed. The recent finding may be “the most concrete indication yet that investigators remain sceptical that Mr Trump has been fully cooperative in their efforts to recover documents … supposed to have [been] turned over to the National Archives at the end of his term," Times noted. Trump, it stressed, had obviously failed to get a lawyer to claim that he had turned in all the documents as he stepped down from his presidential duties. 

DOJ now plans to take concrete measures including “giv[ing] up on trying to obtain the documents, issuing a subpoena for them, obtaining another search warrant or pushing for Mr Trump to attest under oath that he has handed over all the materials in his possession," according to the paper. The US National Archives had earlier told the House Oversight Committee that there were missing presidential records from the time Trump administration that has remained outstanding. New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney, the National Archives and Records Administration, or NARA, said that the documents missing may have information related to the White House staff using non-official electronic systems to conduct official business. But the Committee has been unable to obtain records from a number of former Trump administration officials. 

“While there is no easy way to establish absolute accountability, we do know that we do not have custody of everything we should,” NARA said in a statement issued earlier.