Documents seized by FBI from Mar-a-Lago
Source: Department of Justice
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump on Wednesday once again called for a federal judge to appoint a “special master” to review documents seized from Trump’s Florida home by the FBI.
The narrowly-focused filing in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach came one day after the Department of Justice argued that appointing a special master could harm the government’s national security interests.
The DOJ’s filing also said that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation” into the records that had been shipped to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence after the end of his presidency.
And the DOJ revealed that the FBI seized more than 100 classified documents from the Palm Beach resort during its search of the premises earlier this month. The agency also shared a redacted FBI photo showing documents with classification markings that had been recovered from a container in Trump’s “45 Office.”
The former president’s legal team in its Wednesday night reply accused the DOJ of twisting “the framework of responding to a motion for a Special Master into an all-encompassing challenge to any judicial consideration, presently or in the future, of any aspect of its unprecedented behavior in this investigation.”
Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, has set a hearing for Thursday at 1 p.m. ET in a West Palm Beach courthouse.
Trump had sued to block the Justice Department from further investigating any materials taken in the Mar-a-Lago raid until a special master is able to analyze them. That step is typically taken when there is a chance that some evidence should be withheld from prosecutors because of various legal privileges.
The DOJ told the judge on Monday that its review of the seized materials was complete, and that a law enforcement team had identified a “limited set” of materials that may be protected by attorney-client privilege. That privilege often refers to the legal doctrine that protects the confidentiality of communications between an attorney and their client.
Trump’s lawyers responded Wednesday that the so-called Privilege Review Team was “wholly deficient” in identifying and separating all potentially privileged documents from the rest of the seized materials.
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