CNN —
Two of Donald Trump’s defense attorneys now believe secret briefings of phone calls with foreign leaders were among “assorted documents” in 15 boxes that Trump returned to the National Archives a year after he left the presidency, according to a new letter from his attorneys to Congress sent.
This organization of the materials “suggests that White House staff simply swept all documents from the President’s desk and other areas into boxes, where they have been since,” attorneys Timothy Parlatore and Jim Trusty wrote to the GOP chairs the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
Her characterization not only reveals new details about the documents, but is part of a broadside against the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump over the classified documents, raising talking points for Republicans as they try to portray the ongoing investigation as politically motivated.
Lawyers are asking Congress to tell the Justice Department to “resign” even as Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation shows signs it’s nearing its end and even though Congress doesn’t have the power to conduct the criminal investigation controlled by the Ministry of Justice.
Parlatore and Trusty say they checked the 15 boxes earlier this year, which are now part of the Justice Department’s investigation. They saw placeholder pages where classified documents were removed from the National Archives, the letter said.
“The vast majority of placeholder insertions relate to briefings for phone calls with foreign leaders who were close to the schedule for those calls,” the attorneys wrote.
The 15 boxes were handed over to the archive in January 2022. The FBI seized more boxes in August 2022 during a court-authorized search that found more than 100 classified documents, including 18 classified as Top Secret. Trump’s own legal team later found more classified materials during a search elsewhere.
The Justice Department has never said exactly what was in the classified material found in Trump’s possession after the presidency. Trump’s lawyers say in their letter that the Justice Department has refused to tell them whether any of the documents remain classified.
It’s not clear why, at this point in the special counsel’s investigation, the Trump legal team was given access to the boxes that were turned over to the National Archives to search them.
Wednesday’s letter was sent to House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner and represents Trump’s legal team, which is looking for a political lifeline by asking Congress to ask the Justice Department to step down because they believe the intelligence community is interfering with the investigation should conduct about what happened to the classified documents.
“The DOJ should be ordered to withdraw, and intelligence agencies should instead conduct an appropriate investigation and provide a full report to this committee and to your Senate colleagues,” the attorneys wrote to Turner.
“This is indicative of the staff’s packaging processes and not criminal intent on the part of President Trump,” the attorneys argued.
The attorneys also pointed to classified documents that have since been discovered in the homes and offices of President Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence.
“As the discovery of documents with classification marks in the homes of President Trump, President Biden and Vice President Pence has shown, poor document handling and retention procedures are not limited to individuals, administrations or political parties,” the attorneys wrote.
The intelligence agencies said in August after the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago that they would conduct their own damage assessment of the classified documents seized.
Earlier this month, intelligence leaders in Congress were given access to some of the classified documents stolen from the homes and offices of Trump, Biden and Pence for Congress to conduct its own review.
Trump’s legal team sent Wednesday’s letter to Turner and copied other intelligence leaders in Congress, including the Democratic-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee. Trump’s allies have for years attacked the various investigations into the former president, but even his former attorney general, William Barr, said examining classified documents put the former president in serious legal jeopardy.
In a February interview with CNN, Parlatore signaled Trump’s legal strategy, saying the DOJ should be “benched” on matters related to classified material and leave it to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, an administrative review of the white man carry out House’s procedures for handling such documents at the end of each presidency.
In Wednesday’s letter, Trump’s attorneys criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the case before the Mar-a-Lago search, arguing that federal investigators put Trump on the defensive by issuing a grand jury subpoena instead to work with Trump.
The letter also attempted to defend a certificate issued by one of Trump’s attorneys after the subpoena last year. In June 2022, attorney Christina Bobb signed a certificate stating that Trump complied with the subpoena by handing over the classified documents in his possession.
“Ultimately, President Trump’s legal team complied with the DOJ’s requests, conducted as diligent a search as was possible by Mr. (Jay) Bratt’s arbitrary deadline, and filed a certificate confirming the same,” the attorneys wrote in the letter of Wednesday.
“To be clear, the certification states that a diligent search was conducted and all relevant documents found were provided – not that the search turned up all possible materials, as many media outlets have incorrectly labeled the certification as a statement,” they added .
However, the certification signed by Bobb states that “all relevant documents accompany this certification”. However, Trump did not hand over all the secret documents in Mar-a-Lago.
Bobb has since testified before the grand jury, and another attorney working on the draft subpoena response, Evan Corcoran, was recently forced to testify before the federal grand jury about the response and other conversations with Trump, prosecutors believe , Trump used his attorney to advance a crime.
Wednesday’s letter also failed to note that the August 2022 FBI search warrant was issued after federal investigators were told that after receiving the subpoena, Trump had stopped moving boxes from a basement storage room to his Mar-a-Lago apartment had ordered.
This story has been updated to reflect additional lawmakers copied onto the letter from Trump’s attorneys.