The outside party will, if Trump gets his way, determine whether some of the seized documents can be exempted from investigations and will not be subordinate to the Department of Justice, which made the decision on the search.
“The break-in, search and seizure of Mar-a-Lago was illegal and unconstitutional and we will take any action necessary to get the documents back,” Trump said in a statement.
Large amount of material
The lawsuit was filed not in federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where the search warrant was issued, but in more distant Fort Pierce, where the only serving judge was appointed by Trump himself.
It was earlier in August that the FBI raided the former president’s residence and took away a number of boxes of material, eleven sets of documents of which were marked as containing highly sensitive information – intended only to be accessed by specific authorities.
Several possible crimes
The published search warrant shows that the FBI is investigating possible violations of three federal laws, the most serious of which falls under the Espionage Act. The suspicions do not concern direct espionage, but the collection, dissemination or loss of classified material.
Trump claims the crackdown was politically motivated, and that the documents are not, in fact, classified. As president, he reportedly had a standing order to declassify documents the moment they were brought from the White House to Mar-a-Lago.