US justice department finds efforts to obstruct Trump investigation

The US department of justice sought a search warrant to look for documents at the home of former president Donald Trump in Florida after receiving evidence that highly classified material had been concealed, it has emerged.

In a court filing on Tuesday night, the US department of justice said a search of Mr Trump’s property at Mar-a-Lago residence and club earlier this month had uncovered more than 100 additional classified items.

It said that in the search on August 8th, material of such sensitivity was recovered that “even the FBI counterintelligence personnel and department of justice attorneys conducting the review required additional clearances before they were permitted to review certain documents”.

The court filing includes a photograph showing a number of files labelled Top Secret spread out over a carpet, and said the documents were recovered from a container in Mr Trump’s office.

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Investigators developed evidence that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago “and that efforts were likely undertaken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” prosecutors wrote in the filing.

The department of justice cast doubt over assurances it had earlier received from Mr Trump’s representatives that a thorough search had been carried out which had led to 38 classified documents being returned to the US government earlier in the summer.

It said that when FBI agents searched the Trump property in August, they found more than 100 additional classified papers, which, prosecutors wrote, “calls into serious question the representations made in the June 3rd certification and casts doubt on the extent of cooperation in this matter”.

Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search earlier this month yielded three classified documents in desks inside Mr Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.

It said this was twice the number of classified documents the former president’s lawyers turned over voluntarily while swearing an oath that they had returned all the material demanded by the US government.

The filing on Tuesday night came in response to Mr Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home.

The department of justice urged a federal judge to oppose the former president’s request to appoint an independent official, known as a special master, to review documents seized during the search of Mr Trump’s property in August.

The former president had taken legal action to block the department of justice from further investigating any materials taken in the raid until the court-appointed assessor could analyse them.

The department of justice said that not only was appointing a special master “unnecessary” but that doing so “would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests”, the prosecutors wrote.