Main: An aerial view of President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate is pictured, Aug. 10, 2022, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Helber, File). Left inset: President Donald Trump speaks during a dinner in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, Sept. 17, 2026, in Washington (AP Photo/Alex Brandon).
A federal lawsuit that seeks "all" records from the FBI's 2022 search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago got a boost from a federal judge, who recognized the "obviously impractical" nature of serving an in-person subpoena on Donald Trump and allowed a prominent YouTuber to use "alternative means" of putting the president on notice.
In March, LegalEagle and the law firm National Security Counselors filed a complaint under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the National Archives (NARA), alleging that their "legal right under FOIA to obtain the records they seek" was wrongly denied.
At issue are the 15 or so boxes that former special counsel Jack Smith "made such a big deal about," as Trump put it when posting in February 2025 that the FBI had "returned" the materials to Florida to "someday be part of the Trump Presidential Library."
On April Fools' Day, the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued an opinion declaring that the Watergate-era Presidential Records Act (PRA) was "unconstitutional" and that Trump "need not further comply with its dictates."
The opinion blamed the PRA for the FBI search and Trump's resulting accusations of "criminal liability" for allegedly willfully retaining classified documents at Mar-a-Lago as a former president and conspiring to obstruct their return to NARA.
The case was dismissed — but not forgotten. Appeals continue to try to bring to light the buried Mar-a-Lago-focused second volume of Smith's report. Other efforts, like the present case, have attempted to prevent the administration from destroying records.
Two weeks after the OLC opinion, LegalEagle — the YouTube channel of attorney and legal commentator Devin Stone — and his attorney Kel McClanahan told U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang that no matter what the DOJ declared, presidential records by law belong to the United States, not to Trump.
"A preservation order is desperately needed," a letter said.
Chuang, a Barack Obama appointee sitting in Maryland, issued that order in May. Later that month, the plaintiffs went to the judge with another request, one that NARA took "no position" on.
The motion for "alternative service" detailed, with a declaration from McClanahan submitted under penalty of perjury, that Trump lawyers with Brito PLLC, Sullivan & Cromwell, LLP, and DLA Piper, LLP, each rebuffed their attempts to serve a subpoena on Trump, ignoring "numerous" emails and voicemails from April through May.
"The undersigned emailed President Trump's private attorney at DLA Piper LLP, asking if she would accept service of this subpoena. He explained that her name had been provided by the Department of Justice as the appropriate point of contact and included a copy of this subpoena," the filing added, referring to Caryn Schechtman.
On Tuesday, the judge said that LegalEagle and McClanahan showed that an "authorization of alternative means of service" was appropriate, since serving Trump in person is "obviously impractical" and "numerous, diligent attempts at service through agents of President Trump" evidently went nowhere.
"Where the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure expressly authorize service by certified mail in certain circumstances, the Court finds that this means of service reasonably ensures actual receipt of the subpoena," Chuang went on, permitting the plaintiffs to "effectuate service upon President Trump by sending the subpoena duces tecum by certified mail" to Schechtman at her firm's offices.
The subpoena seeks the following:
1. All records seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on 8 August 2022 when executing a search of the Mar-a-Lago Club, which have been returned to Donald Trump since 20 January 2025; and2. All correspondence since 20 January 2025 between Donald Trump—or any of his agents—and any government agency about these records or the 8 August 2022 search. This does not include correspondence between the White House and any agency in the course of official Presidential duties.
From the plaintiffs' point of view, the judge's order was a "significant victory."
"First, it serves as a direct judicial prohibition on anyone in Trump's orbit deciding to destroy any of these records. While he could have conceivably argued that he was free to do with these records as he pleased prior to today; he can no longer do so, because you simply cannot destroy records responsive to a legally issued subpoena," McClanahan said in response to Law&Crime's questions about the development.
"Second," the national security attorney added, "the records responsive to the subpoena will serve as evidence regarding the Government's argument that these records do not have to be processed for release and that nobody did anything wrong by spiriting them out of agency custody."