Trump lawyers renew plea for outside supervision of Mar-a-Lago search trove

Instead, Trump lawyers suggest in the filing that the search may have been improper or even illegal because of indications that investigators were concerned that records covered by the Presidential Records Act were at his Palm Beach home.

“This provides the deeply troubling prospect that President Trump’s home was raided under a pretense of a suspicion that Presidential records were on his property — even though the Presidential Records Act is not a criminally-enforceable statute,” Trump’s filing said.

Trump’s lawyers favorably cited a D.C. appeals court’s 1991 ruling in a dispute over electronic messages exchanged during the end of President Ronald Reagan’s second term, which held that while a sitting president has “virtually complete control” over his records, he must notify the Archivist before disposing of records. The ruling notes that “neither the Archivist nor the Congress has the authority to veto the President’s disposal decision.”