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Phony motion placed on Trump raid court docket

The document may have been filed by a serial forger in federal prison.

Published: September 18, 2022 2:54pm

Updated: September 18, 2022 4:18pm

A motion filled with spelling and grammatical errors claiming to be from the U.S. Treasury appeared in the court docket for the Justice Department's probe into records seized from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

The document, which first appeared Monday, said the Treasury had sensitive documents connected to the FBI's raid of Trump's Florida estate, and it included a directive to CNN to maintain "leaked tax records."

The Associated Press reported that the document "is a clear fabrication," and said a review of court records and interviews suggests that the filing came from a serial forger in a North Carolina federal prison.

The fact the document, titled "MOTION to Intervene by U.S. Department of the Treasury," was even able to be filed, highlights questions about problems in the court system's document vetting process.

"The U.S. Department of Treasury through the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service have arrested Seized Federal Securities containing sensitive documents which are subject to the Defendant Sealed Search Warrant by the F.B.I. arrest," the document stated, including spelling and syntax issues.

The filing included two alleged warrants, but they were identical to papers filed from an inmate at a North Carolina prison medical center in a federal court case in Georgia. The case was tossed, similar to other similar lawsuits filed by the incarcerated man. 

He has been in prison for several years after authorities found him not competent to stand trial following his arrest for allegedly planting a fake explosive outside of a Detroit building. The man has filed multiple lawsuits and claimed to represent several federal agencies.

His mail is supposed to face extra scrutiny from the Bureau of Prisons, and the Associated Press reported that it is unclear how the filings got to the West Palm Beach, Florida, clerk's office.  

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