Trump following Mar-a-Lago raid
Trump following Mar-a-Lago raidReuters

A federal judge in Washington declined to hold former US President Donald Trump or his legal team in contempt of court as the Justice Department had requested, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The decision was handed down on Friday, according to the report. The judge instead urged the Justice Department and Trump's legal team to resolve the dispute themselves, the sources said.

The DOJ had urged the judge to hold Trump's team in contempt over failure to fully comply with a May subpoena for documents with classified markings that was directed to Trump's custodian of records -- a person the Trump legal team has not identified.

The proceedings were under seal and not public.

"The President and his counsel will continue to be transparent and cooperative, even in the face of the highly weaponized and corrupt witch-hunt from the Department of 'Justice,'" Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement.

"If the Department of 'Justice' can go after President Trump, they will surely come after any American who they disagree with," Cheung added. "President Trump is the only one who stands in the way of the un-American weaponization of law enforcement."

The development came after Trump’s legal team said it conducted searches at four locations just before Thanksgiving, finding two documents with classified markings at a storage facility in Florida. The Trump team turned over those two documents to the FBI and announced to a federal judge in Washington, DC, that they believed Trump was now in compliance with the six-month-old subpoena.

The Justice Department disagreed with Trump’s team and department prosecutors told DC District Chief Judge Beryl Howell, who oversees federal grand jury proceedings there, that the searches weren’t satisfactory.

In January and June, the Trump team turned over boxes and an envelope of federal records, including some marked as classified. Federal agencies had been seeking their return for months, and the Justice Department issued a subpoena that asked for documents marked as classified in May.

Even after the subpoena, investigators found reason to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, seizing 33 more boxes of records, including more than 100 documents marked classified in the August search.

More recently, prosecutors have insisted that sensitive government documents are still missing and that Trump was obligated to return them.

A report in September indicated that a document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents during the search of Trump’s home.

A subsequent report in October said some of the classified documents recovered by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago included highly sensitive intelligence regarding Iran and China.

Trump insists that he declassified the documents in question before leaving office. The former President and his lawyers have publicly insinuated on multiple occasions that the agents who carried out the raid planted evidence during the search.

A hearing is set for Friday, when Howell will consider whether to hold Trump and his post-presidency office in contempt of court, according to CNN. If held in contempt, he could rack up fines.