The legal tussle over the FBI's investigation into whether former President Donald Trump violated federal law by keeping White House documents at Mar-A-Lago continued this week as the ex-president went to court to stop the DOJ from reviewing some documents.
The former President left Trump Tower in New York City.
The affidavit that the Justice Department used to justify its search of Mar-A-Lago on Friday has been made public.
The federal government was ordered to release the document after they submitted proposed redactions to it, in response to requests from media outlets.
The ex-president went to court on Monday to ask for a third-party to be appointed in the DOJ's review of the materials it seized from Mar-A.
The court motion, which was made to a different judge, has been widely criticized as insufficient by legal experts, and Trump's attorneys were ordered to file a separate motion that better clarified their legal justification for filing the motion with a different judge and what relief they're actually seeking from
There is a separate investigation into Trump's attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia and Sen. Lindsey Graham is fighting a subpoena to testify before a grand jury.
An appeals court blocked Graham's testimony on Sunday and sent the case back to a lower court, which will now consider if there are some questions that Graham can be excused from answering.
Multiple reports this week revealed more information about the ex-president's reported refusal to give documents to the federal government. According to the New York Times and Washington Post, the ex-president sent 15 boxes of White House materials to the National Archives in order to keep them out of the public eye. Tom Fitten, the leader of Judicial Watch, is advising Trump that he shouldn't have given the documents to the National Archives in the first place. Despite the Presidential Records Act requiring those documents to be turned over to the Archives, the ex-president believes he should have full control over records. The National Archives sent a letter to the Trump team in May that said the government was giving the FBI access to the documents. The letter said that Trump couldn't claim executive privilege to keep the documents from being looked at.
The Fulton County District Attorney is looking for testimony from former White House Chief of Staff MarkMeadows and far-right attorney Sidney Powell as part of her office's investigation. The governor of Georgia went to court on Thursday to object to testifying in the probe, and a court filing this week suggested prosecutors are looking into what political pressure the governor faced after the election. Georgia Public Broadcasting pointed out that the filing suggested that the investigation wouldn't be finished before the election.
The DOJ is looking into the efforts of Trump and his allies after the 2020 election. The congressman had his cell phone seized by federal investigators, and now he is fighting to get his phone data back. The congressman filed a lawsuit that was made public this week asking a judge to order the DOJ to return his cell phone data so he can personally review it and determine what information isprivileged, but then filed an updated motion saying he is in discussions with the DOJ himself to try and resolve the issue Trump's attorneys appealed three lawsuits brought against the ex-president from Capitol police officers that hold him liable for the January 6 attack after a federal district judge refused to dismiss the cases.
Here's what the DOJ says in the redacted Mar-A-Lago search affidavit.
Trump asked the judge to appoint a special master to review the records.
MarkMeadows pushed to testify in the voter fraud probe.
The FBI searched Mar-a-Lago after months of resistance by the president.
There were more than 300 classified documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Private resistance to Mar-a-Lago documents is inside Trump's public rhetoric.
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