Documents likely concealed at Donald Trump's Florida home - officials

Documents stored at former President Donald Trump's Florida home were likely concealed as part of an effort to obstruct an FBI investigation, Department of Justice officials say.

In a court filing, the department said "efforts were likely taken to obstruct" the investigation into Mr Trump's handling of classified material.

The filing was a response to Mr Trump's request for an independent party to oversee part of the ongoing case.

Mr Trump denies wrongdoing.

Upon leaving office, US presidents must transfer all of their documents and emails to the National Archives. The FBI is investigating whether Mr Trump improperly handled records by taking them from the White House to Mar-a-Lago after he left office in January 2021.

In the filing released on Tuesday, the justice department's counterintelligence chief, Jay Bratt, gave the clearest picture so far of the department's attempts to retrieve documents from the former president.

Those attempts led to a National Archives team visiting his Mar-a-Lago home in January and retrieving 15 boxes of White House records that contained "highly classified reports", some of which were "intermixed with other records" and even contained Mr Trump's "handwritten notes".

Also included in the department's filing was a photograph of colour-coded documents apparently taken during the search. It shows various files spread out across a carpet with some marked "Secret" and "Top Secret".

Mr Trump responded to the filing on Wednesday, claiming without evidence that FBI agents "threw documents haphazardly all over the floor (perhaps pretending it was me that did it!)".

"[They] then started taking pictures of them for the public to see," he wrote on his Truth Social platform.