Prosecutors at the Department of Justice have asked a federal judge to hold former President Trump’s office in contempt of court for failing to comply with a May subpoena to turn over all classified documents in his possession.
U.S. District Court Judge Beryl Howell has scheduled a Friday hearing on the request, sources familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.
One of the key areas of disagreement centers on the Trump legal team’s repeated refusal to designate a custodian of records to sign a document attesting that all classified materials have been returned to the federal government, according to the Post.
Trump’s team has countered that a request for any lawyer to sign such a blanket statement in good faith, or to advise a client to do so, is unreasonable.
On Wednesday, it was revealed that Trump attorneys had recently hired outside search teams to scour several Trump properties for classified documents, and they found at least two documents with classified markings in a storage unit used by the former President in West Palm Beach, which attorneys immediately handed over to the FBI.
Among his duties special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether thousands of documents taken by Trump when he left the White House, which were retrieved by the FBI as part of an August 8 search warrant on his Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago, warrant criminal charges against the former President.
The DOJ did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.
