Trump requests for the return of privileged documents the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Former President Trump called on the FBI to return documents taken during the Mar-a-Lago raid.
• The former President claimed that the seized documents were privileged material under attorney-client.
• FBI agents took 11 classified documents, despite his lawyer telling the Justice Department he turned them over in June.

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called on the FBI to return seized documents that are allegedly protected by attorney-client and executive privileges.

The FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday, recovering 11 sets of classified documents.

Fox News reported on Saturday that the FBI seized boxes covered by attorney-client privilege and possibly executive privilege, according to unnamed sources familiar with the investigation.

“It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged ‘attorney-client’ material, and also ‘executive’ privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken,” Trump said on Truth Social.

“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken,” he said.

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told CBS’ Face the Nation he’d seen no evidence to support Trump’s claim that the documents were declassified.

“A former president has no declassification authority,” Schiff said. “And the idea that 18 months after the fact Donald Trump could simply announce, ‘Well, I’m retroactively declassifying, or whatever I took home had the effect of declassifying them’ is absurd.”

Trump and his associates have frequently sought to claim executive privilege to prevent the release of documents or information.

Trump attempted to claim executive privilege over presidential records that the House Jan. 6 committee requested last year but was denied.

Several former White House officials have also refused to appear before the committee, citing executive privilege.

Source: The Hill