Federal Magistrate Aileen Cannon, whom Donald Trump himself appointed in 2020, heard from Republican lawyers and Justice Department officials during a hearing in West Palm Beach, Florida.
She said she would decide later on the appointment of an independent third party desired by the ex-president, without further details for the moment on the date of this announcement, according to information from several American media.
One of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, quoted by CNN, said the appointment of an independent expert would build confidence in the investigation and “lower tension” in the country.
Department officials argued that, no longer president, Mr. Trump could not claim to keep the documents.
Since the spectacular and unprecedented police operation for a former American head of state, carried out by the FBI on August 8 in Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Donald Trump has been storming against an act which he considers “illegal and unconstitutional” and repeats having been targeted for political reasons.
Mr. Trump, who flirts more and more openly with the idea of a new candidacy in 2024, therefore asked the justice to appoint an expert to review the documents seized and determine which could be returned to him or be classified “confidential” – and would therefore not be usable in investigations against him.
The Justice Department has strongly opposed such an appointment, saying it could block investigators’ access to documents “and would severely damage government interests, including national security.”
According to a ministry document, the top secret texts seized from the former president’s home were “probably hidden” to hinder the federal police investigation targeting him.
In January, the former president’s teams handed over 15 boxes of documents he had taken when he left the White House to the national archives agency, responsible for recording presidential activities for history.
It was after examining these boxes that the FBI, convinced that Donald Trump kept other classified documents in Florida in potentially inappropriate conditions, decided to search, seizing on this occasion about thirty other boxes of documents.
Investigators suspect the Republican of having violated an American law on espionage which very strictly regulates the possession of confidential documents. Donald Trump assured that these documents had been declassified by him.
He is also the target of investigations into his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and his role in the assault by his supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
He is currently not being prosecuted in any case.