Days before the special master is scheduled to start analyzing the thousands of documents taken in the search, Donald Trump made the announcement that he would be returning to Mar-a-Lago for the first time since the FBI raided his Florida resort and home in August.
The declaration was made by the former president in a post on his social media platform Truth Social. He criticized the raid as “unjust, illegal, and unnecessary” and stated that he would be examining the damage caused by what he dubbed the FBI’s “break-in.”
Trump wrote: “I’ll shortly be heading to the location of the unlawful, unjustified raid and break-in of my house, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida.” I’ll be able to witness firsthand the effects of the pointless ransacking of rooms and other parts of the house.
The fact that so much has been unlawfully taken has already been established; it is not a “beautiful thing.” So sad! There has been a serious breach of privacy and a flagrant violation of the 4th Amendment, among other things. I’ll inform the American people about the TRUTH!
Trump has been traveling the country giving speeches and teeing up for games of golf ever since the raid on August 8 while he was in New York City.
Just as Judge Raymond Dearie, the Department of Justice’s special master, is about to start his assessment of the roughly 11,000 items taken from Mar-a-Lago during the raid in order to weed out those shielded by assertions of legal privilege, he returns home.
Dearie has invited the DOJ and the lawyers for Trump to a “preliminary conference” on Tuesday in New York City. He has until November 30 to do it, after which the DOJ can go on its investigation into the Mar-a-Lago materials.
About 300 things tagged as classified were discovered in a storage room and an office, according to the FBI, among the documents confiscated while executing the court-authorized search warrant at the residence.
Dearie was chosen to examine the records after Trump asked for an impartial arbitrator to evaluate if any of the records confiscated from his home were covered by executive privilege or the attorney-client privilege.
Federal investigators have been unable to review any of the confiscated documents since Trump submitted the request in August and will not be able to do so until Dearie’s investigation is over.
After considering a number of candidates, the DOJ and Trump’s legal team decided on Dearie, who was formerly the chief judge for the federal court for the Eastern District of New York.
Prior to Ronald Reagan’s 1986 appointment of Dearie to the federal bench, she served as Brooklyn’s top prosecutor.
High-profile terrorism cases, some from outside, were on his docket.
He has also served on the court that permits Justice Department requests for wiretaps in order to conduct investigations into alleged foreign agents.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and maintains that he is the victim of a political plot to prevent him from winning the election in 2024.
He said that the Department of Justice’s actions were unjustified in an interview with radio broadcaster Hugh Hewitt.
There is no other explanation, he continued, ‘but that they are just ill and deranged, which is always possible, because I did absolutely nothing wrong – you read the legal paperwork -‘
Hewitt questioned Trump about the possibility that he had grabbed the documents intentionally or accidentally.
Remember, number one, that everything was declassified, said Trump. Legal authorities, though, have questioned whether Trump actually did that.
Even his own legal counsel hasn’t argued that point in court documents.
In fact, Trump’s attorneys neglected to note that any of the documents they turned over to the government in June had been declassified.
According to a court document referring to the former president of the United States, “while delivering the documents, neither FPOTUS COUNSEL 1 nor INDIVIDUAL 2 said that FPOTUS had declassified the materials.”
</ad-slot