A federal judge has denied the Justice Department’s request to subpoena Trump’s team over classified documents

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A federal judge on Friday denied the Justice Department’s request to hold former President Donald Trump in office in defiance of a grand jury subpoena demanding the return of documents with classified markings, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The decision was made in a closed-door hearing at a federal courthouse in Washington, DC

The Justice Department declined comment.

Trump’s lawyers had no comment, but a spokeswoman for Trump said in a statement that the former president “and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative, even in the face of a highly armed and corrupt witch hunt from to the Department of Justice.”

The DOJ’s contempt request, first reported by The Washington Post, comes after Trump’s lawyers recently discovered at least two documents with these markings in a storage unit in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The storage unit is not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where the FBI executed a search warrant in August after receiving information that Trump was holding classified documents even after being hit with a subpoena. grand jury for their return in May .

That search turned up more than 100 documents with these markings, including some marked top secret, in a storage room at Mar-a-Lago and in Trump’s office there.

After receiving the subpoena, Trump’s lawyers returned several documents including some with classified markings in early June, and told the Justice Department in a letter that all documents with such markings had been returned.

The new documents were found after the Trumps’ lawyers hired an outside firm to conduct searches last month at the storage facility and other locations.

After Trump left the White House, his office arranged with the federal General Services Administration to have six pallets of boxes moved from a storage facility in Virginia down to West Palm Beach and Mar-a-Lago in July of 2021, GSA emails previously obtained by the NBC News show. The pallets were delivered in August of 2021, with four going to the storage facility and two going to Mar-a-Lago, the emails show.

The Justice Department is conducting what it describes as an active criminal investigation into the mishandling of national security information, as well as possible obstruction of justice.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and claimed that he had declared the documents and that they were his personal property. Under federal law, official White House papers are federal property and must be turned over to the National Archives when a president leaves office.

Friday’s hearing on the DOJ’s request, and the legal arguments underlying it, have been sealed because they involve grand jury proceedings. Any orders from Chief US District Judge Beryl Howell in the case, including any outcome from Friday’s closed-door hearing, are likely to be filed under seal.

NBC News was part of a press coalition that unsuccessfully sought access to the hearing. The coalition argued in a letter to Howell that the trial should be public, in part because lawyers for Trump and the government have already acknowledged in court filings that there is a pending grand jury action.

Trump attorneys Timothy Parlatore, James Trusty and Evan Corcoran were seen entering the judge’s chambers Friday around 2 pm ET, and they left the courthouse just before 3:30 pm

Corcoran drafted the letter in June confirming that all classified documents had been returned, NBC News previously reported.

The hearing came a day after Trump’s civil action asking a court-appointed special master to review documents recovered by the feds in August was officially dismissed by a federal appeals court. That move allowed DOJ investigators to finally review the 11,000 documents they recovered in August that did not have classified markings.

The same court, the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, allowed the DOJ to review more than 100 documents with classified markings in October, overturning an earlier decision by Aileen Cannon, a Florida federal court judge appointed by Trump. .

Ken Dilanian is the justice and intelligence correspondent for NBC News, based in Washington.

Liz Brown-Kaiser

Liz Brown-Kaiser reports and produces for NBC News, based in Washington.

Dareh Gregorian is a political reporter for NBC News.

Daniel Barnes contributed.

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