Justice Dept. Is Said to Believe Trump Has More
Documents
The move underscores the skepticism among investigators about the former president’s cooperation with the effort to retrieve government material, and it exposed a rift among his lawyers.
A top Justice Department official told former President Donald J. Trump’s lawyers in recent weeks that the department believed he had not returned all the documents he took when he left the White House, according to two people briefed on the matter.
...
The outreach from the department prompted a rift among Trump’s lawyers about how to respond, with one camp counseling a cooperative approach that would include bringing in an outside firm to conduct a further search for documents and another advising Mr. Trump to maintain a more combative posture.
The more combative camp, the people briefed on the matter said, won out.
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...the Justice Department has previously signaled doubts that Mr. Trump had turned over everything in his possession. Shortly after the search in August, it was revealed that federal investigators had found dozens of empty folders at Mar-a-Lago marked as containing classified information.
48, as I recall. In the above link the Quasi's lede is "F.B.I. Found 48 Empty Folders That Had Contained Classified Documents at Trump’s Home".
The empty folders [the "new" empty folders] were found during the search of Mar-a-Lago along with 40 other empty folders that said they contained sensitive documents that should be returned “to staff secretary/military aide,” according to a court filing. Agents found the empty folders along with seven documents marked as “top secret” in Mr. Trump’s office. Investigators also found 11 more marked as “top secret” in a storage room.
Okay, well that adds up to 58, Quasis. How many total empty folders Quasis, Jesus Christ!...
Justice Department officials and representatives of Mr. Trump have held a number of discussions in recent weeks. After the call from Mr. Bratt, who has led the Justice Department’s investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of the documents, Mr. Trump initially agreed to go along with the advice of one of his lawyers, Christopher M. Kise, who suggested hiring a forensic firm to search for additional documents, according to the people briefed on the matter.
But other lawyers in Mr. Trump’s circle — who have argued for taking a more adversarial posture in dealing with the Justice Department — disagreed with Mr. Kise’s approach. They talked Mr. Trump out of the idea...[which] led, in part, to the minimization of Mr. Kise’s role in Mr. Trump’s legal team in recent weeks.
The miniaturization of Kise has been reported.
“The weaponized Department of Justice and the politicized F.B.I. are spending millions and millions of American tax dollars to perpetuate witch hunt after witch hunt."--Taylor Budowich, mammal spokesman.
Which witch, this witch? Oh yeah we're hunting him. Gonna git 'im, too.
Trump’s apparent reluctance so far to cooperate puts the department in the fraught position of having to decide from among an array of difficult choices, including whether to 1) give up on trying to obtain the documents, 2) issuing a subpoena for them, 3) obtaining another search warrant or 4) pushing for Trump to attest under oath that he has handed over all the materials in his possession.
My goodness, that is not a fraught position for DOJ to be in, what are they talking about? Michael S. Schmidt, Maggie Haberman and Katie Benner are the reporters here. "Giving up" is not a choice.
Bob Litt, a longtime national security lawyer, said the Justice Department has a number of options short of carrying out another search warrant. One would be to file a motion in the ongoing court fight over the documents, seeking either return of the documents or a statement under oath from Mr. Trump that he has returned all the documents. By doing so, Mr. Litt said, the department could back Mr. Trump into a corner.
Was Litt "fraught" when he told you these options.
How the department proceeds, he said, would likely be influenced by whether the department believes the documents in question are highly sensitive.