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The department had asked a federal judge to force a representative of Donald J. Trump to swear under oath that there are no more classified documents at any of his properties.
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Alan Feuer and
A federal judge in Washington on Friday ended a hearing without acting on a Justice Department request to find representatives of Donald J. Trump’s post-presidential office in contempt of court for failing to comply fully with a subpoena demanding that he return all classified documents he had taken with him when he left office, two people familiar with the matter said.
They said that the judge left it to the Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s team to resolve the department’s concerns about whether the former president might have more classified documents at his properties after more than a year of efforts by the federal government to retrieve them.
It was unclear after the closed-door proceeding if the judge, Beryl A. Howell, had left open the possibility of ruling on the matter at a future date. Several news outlets filed a letter asking the judge to unseal the proceedings, including The New York Times.
Judge Howell had been asked by the Justice Department to decide whether to impose financial penalties or issue a contempt finding if no one from Mr. Trump’s office agreed to state under oath that, to the best of their knowledge, all of the classified materials he took from the White House when he left office last year have been returned to the government.
The 80-minute hearing, in Federal District Court in Washington, was held after Mr. Trump’s team acknowledged having turned up more government documents in a recent search of his properties. The hearing was not open to the public because of grand jury secrecy rules. Judge Howell, as the chief judge for the District of Columbia federal district courts, oversees grand jury proceedings.
The request by the government, first reported on Thursday by the Washington Post, came after months of frustration in the Justice Department with the former president and his lawyers, who have repeatedly made assurances to prosecutors that the sensitive materials had all been returned — only to find out there were more.
The fact that Judge Howell had been asked to mull a contempt finding suggests that the Justice Department has taken a newly aggressive stance toward Mr. Trump’s long-delayed response to the government’s efforts to retrieve a trove of sensitive records that he took from the White House to Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida.
The New York Times reported in October that a top Justice Department official had told Mr. Trump’s team that the department believed Mr. Trump had more classified documents in his possession.
Around Thanksgiving, a team of experts hired by Mr. Trump concluded searches that included other locations — among them, Trump Tower in New York; his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.; and a storage facility near Mar-a-Lago. At the storage facility, the team discovered at least two documents that bore classification markings, prompting lawyers for the former president to notify prosecutors about them.
The Trump team provided a written statement that they had returned everything they had found, according to the two people familiar with the matter.
But the discovery of additional material further undercut an affidavit that some of Mr. Trump’s other lawyers had drafted and signed in June, saying that they had done a “diligent” search of his properties and that to the best of their knowledge no classified material remained in his possession.
The attestation in June was signed by a lawyer for Mr. Trump named Christina Bobb and drafted by another named Evan Corcoran. Mr. Corcoran was among the lawyers in court for Mr. Trump’s team on Friday, all of whom left the courthouse without speaking to reporters.
Two months later, in August, F.B.I. agents carried out a court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago and came away with 26 boxes, including 11 sets of material marked as classified, comprising scores of additional documents. One set had the highest level of classification, top secret/sensitive compartmented information.
The new bid by prosecutors to persuade Judge Howell to use her authority to hold Mr. Trump and his legal team accountable for the return of the materials arose just in recent days, as prosecutors learned of the documents that had been newly found at the storage facility, according to one of the people briefed on the matter.
It came weeks after the Justice Department named a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee the investigation into whether Mr. Trump had illegally kept national security documents at his private property and obstructed the government’s attempts to get them back. Mr. Smith is also overseeing the criminal investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to reverse the results of the 2020 election.
Some lawyers who have worked with Mr. Smith’s team have said they were told that the Justice Department would no longer pull punches in seeking to enforce court orders or subpoenas.
The initial grand jury subpoena for the documents was issued in May after officials with the National Archives, after nearly a year of attempts, retrieved 15 boxes of material from Mr. Trump’s club at Mar-a-Lago in January and discovered that they contained dozens of classified documents.
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
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