Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday asked the US Supreme Court to intervene in a case involving documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
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The Republican billionaire sent an urgent appeal to the High Court to block the Justice Department from examining a hundred documents marked “classified” seized on the occasion.
The appeal does not concern the legality of the spectacular search by federal police at Mar-a-Lago in August, and does not address any substantive issue.
He is contesting an appeals court ruling that authorized the ministry to examine the 11,000 seized documents without waiting for the results of an independent expert responsible for reviewing them.
The Supreme Court, which has been profoundly reshuffled by Donald Trump during his tenure, is not bound to accept his appeal. With six of the nine Conservative magistrates, it has already backfired on him, notably by refusing to support him in his post-election crusade.
This new legal battle is about the White House archives. When he left office in January 2021, Donald Trump took full boxes of documents. However, a 1978 law requires any US president to turn over all of his emails, letters and other working documents to the National Archives.
In January 2020, he finally delivered fifteen boxes. After examining them, federal police, however, determined he was keeping the others at his luxury residence in Mar-a-Lago. FBI agents went there for the first time in June and were convinced that all the documents had not been provided to them.
On August 8, they conducted an unprecedented search based on a warrant for “possession of confidential documents” and “obstructing a federal investigation” and seized approximately thirty boxes.
Donald Trump, who is toying with the idea of running for re-election in 2024, insists that the seized documents are private or classified because he says he is politically “harassed”.
He has been sued by New York courts in civil actions, alleging that he took advantage of his group’s assets to obtain more lucrative loans or minimize taxes.
