Yesterday, Thursday, a US judge considered former US President Donald Trump's request to appoint an independent expert to review documents seized by the FBI during a raid on his Florida home to determine if some of them could be kept secret.
Trump, who does not hide the idea that he might run for the presidential elections in 2024, called on the judiciary to appoint an independent expert to review the documents that were confiscated and determine which of them could be returned to him, or be classified as “secret”;
It will not be used in investigations targeting it.
Federal Judge Elaine Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020, considered his request at a hearing in Florida, which was attended by Trump's lawyers and representatives of the Department of Justice.
The judge said that she would later announce her decision regarding the appointment of an independent third party desired by the former president, without giving more details at the present time about the date of this announcement, according to information published by several American media.
Reuters news agency said that the federal judge authorized the publication of more details about what FBI investigators seized from Trump's residence.
Trump denounces the FBI's raid on his home, calling it "unlawful and unconstitutional", and repeats that it was targeted for political reasons.
CNN quoted Christopher Case, one of Trump's lawyers, as saying that appointing an independent expert would build confidence in the investigation and ease tension in the country.
For its part, the Ministry of Justice opposed the appointment of an independent third party, saying that it would deny investigators access to the documents, and "would seriously harm the interests of the government in relation to national security."
According to the ministry document, top-secret texts confiscated from the former president's home "were likely to have been hidden" to impede the FBI investigation targeting him.
In January, the former president's teams handed 15 boxes of documents he took when he left the White House to the National Archives, which is tasked with recording presidential activities for history.
After examining these boxes, the FBI, convinced that Trump was keeping other classified documents in Florida in potentially inappropriate circumstances, raided the house and seized about 30 other boxes of documents.
Investigators suspect that the Republican billionaire violated the US law on espionage related to the possession of classified documents, but Trump confirmed that these documents had been declassified.
The former president is subject to another investigation related to his efforts to annul the results of the 2020 presidential election, and his role in the attack by his supporters on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, but he is not yet prosecuted in any case.