New legal documents were unsealed Thursday by a federal judge in the wake of the Mar-a-Lago raid.
They hinted at ways of prosecuting Trump that do not rest on whether documents he kept are classified.
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Former President Donald Trump has offered a shifting array of defenses in response to the August 8 FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, which uncovered a trove of secret documents.
Among them is the claim that he declassified all of the documents while in office under the president's sweeping powers over national secrets.
But procedural documents unsealed Thursday by federal judge Bruce Reinhart, including the cover sheet of the warrant used in the search, revealed that this defense may not be as effective as Trump hoped, legal experts say.
Several figures from the Trump administration have described that claim as implausible or even "a lie. »