Donald Trump’s legal team has asked for a sit-down with Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying the former president is being “treated unfairly” amid a probe of his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
“Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter, and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” said attorneys John Rowley and James Trusty in a Tuesday letter to Garland that the former president later posted on Truth Social.
“No President of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such an outrageous and unlawful fashion.
“We request a meeting at your earliest convenience to discuss the ongoing injustice that is being perpetrated by your Special Counsel and his prosecutors.”
The Justice Department declined to comment on the matter.
The response followed reports earlier Tuesday that Special Counsel Jack Smith was “wrapping up” a criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of dozens of boxes of classified material taken by the FBI from the 76-year-old’s Mar-a-Lago estate in August.
Since Garland appointed him in November, Smith and his legal team have apparently interviewed all employees at the resort in Palm Beach, Fla., probing whether Trump failed to hand over the sensitive presidential documents to the National Archives and Records Administration.
The investigation could result in a second indictment of the former president, who in April became the first commander-in-chief to be charged with a crime after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg charged Trump with 34 felony counts related to an alleged “hush money” payment to the porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election.
Justice Department prosecutors are also nearing a charging decision in a probe of first son Hunter Biden’s alleged felony tax and gun crimes — a four-year investigation that has been headed by Delaware US Attorney David Weiss.
At least two IRS whistleblowers tasked with investigating the president’s son for the offenses have been ousted without explanation after they raised concerns that Garland may be implicated in a cover-up of the matter.
FBI agents have also expressed “growing frustration” at the pace of the federal probe after the bureau apparently “finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago.”
Hunter’s lawyers met with federal prosecutors about the case last month.
The National Archives told Smith’s team last week in a letter that it will hand in communications between Trump and his advisers from when he was president that discussed protocols for declassifying documents.
Biden, 80, has also faced questions about his handling of classified documents from his time as vice president after leaving office in 2017.
He has handed over some of the sensitive documents from his days in the Obama White House after he apparently found them in his former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, DC, and others were seized by the FBI from the garage of his home in Wilmington, Del.
Garland has appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur to probe whether the president violated the Presidential Records Act or compromised US national security in retaining the documents.
Smith is also overseeing a separate investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.