According to a report, the US Department of Justice has failed, at least for the time being, in its attempt to legally prosecute the team led by former President Donald Trump over the dispute over court documents.

A court in the US capital Washington failed to comply with the ministry's request to take action against Trump's lawyers for contempt of court at a hearing, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources. It remained unclear whether the judge finally rejected the application or whether she could decide on this matter at a later date.

According to US media, the background is the growing resentment of the public prosecutor's office over the behavior of the Trump team. The question is whether all classified information has really been returned to the government. The Justice Department has repeatedly requested written assurances from Trump's attorneys. They are said to have refused to sign such an insurance. The judge has now left it to the Justice Department and Trump's team to resolve the dispute.

The dispute over the handling of government documents has been going on for months now: On August 8, the FBI federal police searched Trump's private property Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and confiscated documents with the annotations "Secret" and among other things "Top Secret" from his tenure. The fact that the 76-year-old stored the documents at home could have made him liable to prosecution. It was only reported on Wednesday that further secret documents had turned up in a storage room used by Trump. A team hired by the Republican made the find.