In a sign of how close Special Counsel Jack Smith may be to an indictment of President Trump for mishandling classified documents, the former president’s lawyers met with Department of Justice officials on Monday to raise concerns about the federal government’s handling of the probe. This comes as a federal grand jury prepares to reconvene at Washington.

Lawyers for the target of a federal investigation often meet with prosecutors when it appears that criminal charges are imminent. The meeting was first reported by the New York Times.

It is not clear with whom the legal team met or what issues were raised on Monday, but one of Mr. Trump’s former lawyers expressed concerns previously that shed insight into some of the team’s anxieties. 

“I’ve long had concerns about the manner in which DOJ personnel conducted this investigation,” one of Mr. Trump’s former attorneys defending him in the classified documents case, Tim Parlatore, said. “Regardless of what the evidence shows, if your prosecution team has engaged in misconduct, that’s a relevant factor to consider in making any charging decisions, particularly in a case with significant political magnitude.”

The investigation is being led by Mr. Smith, who was appointed as special counsel by Attorney General Garland after classified documents were also found at President Biden’s University of Pennsylvania office and his home at Wilmington, Delaware. 

On May 23, Mr. Trump released a letter from his legal team requesting a meeting with DOJ officials to discuss concerns about the case. “Unlike President Biden, his son Hunter and the Biden family, President Trump is being treated unfairly,” the letter to Mr. Garland states. “No president of the United States has ever, in the history of our country, been baselessly investigated in such outrageous and unlawful fashion.” 

Mr. Biden is subject to his own special counsel investigation into whether he broke the law in mishandling classified information. 

Mr. Smith is working with a number of agencies, including the National Archives and Records Administration, which corresponded with the former president for months about him returning the documents, to no avail. 

NARA has said it will turn over 16 records related to Mr. Trump’s handling of classified information. The records will reportedly show that his legal team was aware of declassification processes. 

Mr. Trump gave conflicting answers on the issue of whether he could legally hold on to classified documents from his years in the White House during town halls on two competing networks. 

On Thursday, the former president sat down with Fox News’s Sean Hannity for a televised town hall. When asked about the federal investigation into whether he broke the law in keeping the documents, he said he doesn’t “know anything about it. All I know is everything I did was right.” He also said he “abided by” the Presidential Records Act. 

On May 10, he was defiant when asked about the case by CNN’s Kaitlan Collins during a town hall in New Hampshire. Mr. Trump said he had “the absolute right” to hold on to the trove of papers as president of the United States. “When we left Washington, we had the boxes lined up on the sidewalk outside for everybody,” he said.