Trump attempts to use Truth Social post to make legal request for DOJ to give Mar-a-Lago raid documents back

Former US President Donald Trump leaves Trump Tower to meet with New York Attorney General Letitia James for a civil investigation on August 10, 2022 in New York City.

James Devaney/GC Images

• Trump on Sunday demanded the return of some documents taken in the raid on Mar-a-Lago.
• He made the request in a Truth Social post, appearing to mistakenly think it had legal force.
• Trump was reacting to a Fox story claiming some documents taken may be privileged.

President Donald Trump over the weekend made a demand for documents taken by the FBI to be returned to him — but via a Truth Social post rather than his lawyers.

The former president made the demand on Sunday. It seemed worded as if Trump expected it to have legal force.

"Oh great!," Trump wrote. "It has just been learned that the FBI, in its now famous raid of Mar-a-Lago, took boxes of privileged 'attorney-client' material, and also 'executive' privileged material, which they knowingly should not have taken. By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken. Thank you!"

Truth Social — effectively a clone of Twitter with a MAGA sensibility — refers to individual posts as "truths," and the retweet equivalent is to "retruth" a message.

The documents Trump asked to be returned are ones he claims are covered by attorney-client privilege, and also executive privilege from when he was in office.

The nature of the documents is unclear. Trump appeared to be responding to a Fox News story which identified five boxes and one further set of documents as being potentially protected. The six entries are the ones seen below:

A portion of a legal document listing items taken from Mar-a-Lago by FBI agents executing a search warrant on August 8, 2022.

United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida

Fox did not name its sources for the story, which also described interactions between the Department of Justice and Trump's legal team.

Posting on social media, as Trump did, is not generally considered a valid way to make a legal request.

Insider was not able to locate any public documents making a formal version of Trump's request. The Fox story did, however, describe a more timid version of Trump's camp seeking the return of some files.

It said that Trump's lawyers had asked the DOJ whether it would support the court appointing an independent official to review the records in question. Per Fox, the DOJ said no.

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