The National Archives and Records Administration’s months-long campaign to recover records that former President Donald Trump brought from the White House to his South Florida residence at the end of his presidency has given way to a legal dispute between the former president and the Justice Department over the documents.
Trump initiated the legal battle in late August, when he filed a lawsuit in a Florida federal district court, two weeks after the FBI executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach resort. According to a thorough inventory made available by the Justice Department, agents took 33 items holding over 11,000 documents, of which approximately 100 were classified.
Since then, an outside arbiter known as a special master has been appointed to evaluate the materials taken by federal investigators from Mar-a-Lago, and the Justice Department has succeeded — for the time being — in its effort to regain access to the subset of 100 sensitive materials that the district court had prohibited it from using for investigative purposes.
But with the special master facing a Nov. 30 deadline to finish his assessment of the seized materials, and the Justice Department’s investigation into Trump’s suspected inappropriate handling of secret information and government records ongoing, it’s unlikely the end of the legal battle is near.
Since Trump petitioned the courts to interfere, the following are the events that have unfolded on the legal front. Here is a timeline of the government’s previous efforts to retrieve the documents.
2022
Trump files a lawsuit against the Justice Department on August 22 requesting the appointment of a special master to review the Mar-a-Lago records collected by the FBI. The request follows the initial search by more than two weeks.
Aug. 27: U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon writes a preliminary order indicating she will likely appoint a special master in response to Trump’s request for a third party to assess the seized materials.
The Justice Department informs Cannon on August 29 that the filter teams, acting independently from the investigation teams, have finished their search of the seized records for potentially privileged information.
30 August: The Department of Justice delivers a 36-page response to Trump’s request for a special master, declaring it “unnecessary,” and revealing that they had evidence that Trump’s staff may have impeded their investigation.
Trump claimed on Truth Social on August 31 that he declassified the records depicted in the redacted FBI photo included in the 36-page response from the Justice Department.
“Terrible how the FBI, during the Raid of Mar-a-Lago, scattered documents randomly all over the floor (perhaps assuming I did it! ), and then began taking pictures of them for the world to view. Thought they wanted them to remain secret? Thank goodness I declassified!” he says.
In their petition, federal prosecutors argued that Trump’s counsel never “claimed that the former president had declassified the materials or asserted executive privilege.”
Trump’s legal team responds to the Justice Department’s opposition to the appointment of a special master with a 19-page response. The former president’s attorneys ask Cannon once more to hire a third party to evaluate the records recovered from Mar-a-Lago and attack the search warrant execution as “extraordinary, unwarranted, and legally unsupported.”
“Left uncontrolled, the Department of Justice will impugn, leak, and make public selective portions of its inquiry,” they argue.
Federal prosecutors have maintained that sensitive records acquired from Trump’s property belong to the government and should have been handed to the National Archives by January 2021, the end of Trump’s administration. In their response, Trump’s attorneys argue that “the concept that presidential records would contain sensitive material was never a cause for anxiety.”
They also argue that the Archives should have made a “good faith effort” with Trump to recover the records, despite the fact that the agency has made public a number of letters indicating a willingness to work with the former president’s team to retrieve the materials brought to Mar-a-Lago.
Sept. 1: U.S. District Judge Aileen Connor orders the release of a comprehensive list of the items seized during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago on August 8, while reserving her decision on whether to appoint an independent party to review the documents.
A detailed inventory of the items seized during the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago last month is released on September 2, a day after U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions testified before Congress. Judge Aileen Cannon’s directive to do so.
Multiple government documents and photographs with classified markings, including secret and top secret, and multiple empty folders with classification markings are listed on the newly released receipt of collected items.
The sensitive documents and government property are listed in a manner indicating that they were mixed with more personal items such as magazines, newspapers, gifts, and clothing.
Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the records seized by the FBI during its search of Mar-a-Lago is granted by Cannon on September 5. She also orders the government to temporarily cease reviewing and using the recovered documents for its investigation “until the special master’s review is complete or until further court order.”
However, Cannon permits the government to continue reviewing and utilizing the seized materials for “intelligence classification and national security assessments.”
In her 24-page order, she sets a deadline of September 9 for the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys to “meaningfully confer” and submit a joint file with a list of prospective candidates to serve as special master and a suggested explanation of the review’s mechanisms.
The Justice Department tells the court on September 8 that it wants to appeal Cannon’s ruling authorizing the appointment of a special master for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Appellate Circuit Court
Federal prosecutors also want Cannon to partially lift her judgment to allow investigators to continue studying 103 “confidential,” “secret,” and “top secret” papers recovered from Mar-a-Lago.
They argue in court documents that the classification markings “establish on the face of the documents that they are government records,” not Trump’s personal records, and that the government and the general public will suffer “irreparable harm” if the materials cannot be reviewed and utilized in the criminal investigation into the former president’s handling of sensitive records.
Federal prosecutors and Trump’s attorneys each submitted two applicants to serve as special master to evaluate the records seized by the FBI from Mar-a-Lago on September 9, fulfilling the timeframe set by Cannon in her September 5 order.
The Department of Justice proposes former U.S. judge Barbara Jones. Thomas Griffith, who served on the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, and Thomas Griffith, who served on the U.S. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals.
Trump’s legal team offers former U.S. chief judge Raymond Dearie. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Paul Huck, Jr., former general counsel to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.
Trump’s attorneys ask Cannon on September 12 to continue preventing federal investigators from utilizing the 103 sensitive papers seized by the FBI and to reject the Justice Department’s request to withdraw a portion of her order from September 5.
In a 21-page court brief, the former president’s legal team describes the FBI investigation into his handling of secret documents as “unusual and inappropriate” and asserts that there is “no proof that any ‘classified data’ were released to anyone.”
Lawyers for the former president further say that he had “wide authority” to declassify documents and that, under the Presidential Records Act, he has “unfettered access” to presidential records. They tell the court that the controversy around the documents is a “document storage dispute that has blown out of hand.”
Trump’s attorneys assert that the government is unlawfully attempting to criminalize the 45th president’s ownership of his own presidential and personal records.
In a second court filing, the former president’s attorneys oppose to the Justice Department’s two choices for special master: Jones and Griffith. They state before the court, “it is more respectful to the candidates from any party to conceal the grounds for opposition from a public pleading that is likely to be widely distributed.”
Trump’s attorneys will only request permission to object to Jones and Griffith if the judge “specifically want to obtain and evaluate that material.”
Separately, the Justice Department asks the court to appoint one of Trump’s candidates, Jones, Griffith, or Dearie, as special master, citing their experience on the federal bench and involvement in “relevant legislation.”
“Judges Jones, Griffith, and Dearie each have extensive judicial experience and have presided over numerous federal criminal and civil matters, including federal cases involving national security and privilege considerations,” write Justice Department attorneys.
Federal prosecutors respectfully object to the nomination of Huck, the second of Trump’s two candidates for special master, because he lacks the experience shared by the other three candidates.
15 September: Cannon appoints Dearie as the special master to review the materials seized by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago for personal goods and documents, as well as anything potentially susceptible to attorney-client or executive privilege claims.
In her appointing order, Cannon stipulates that Dearie must complete his evaluation by November 30 and that Trump is responsible for the special master’s fees and expenses. She orders Cannon and the parties, the Justice Department and Trump, to “give classified documents priority in terms of timing.”
In a separate decision, Cannon denies the federal prosecutors’ request to grant their investigators access to the approximately 100 secret documents. In her 10-page order, the judge refuted two of the premises outlined by the Justice Department in its motion: that the roughly 100 documents at the center of the request are classified records and that Trump has no “possessional interest” in any of them; and that Trump has no plausible claim of privilege with regard to any of these documents.
She writes, “The court does not think it appropriate to accept the government’s judgments on these critical and contentious issues without further assessment by a neutral third party in a timely and organized manner.”
16 September: Justice Department attorneys request U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to lift a portion of Cannon’s ruling prohibiting the use of around 100 classified materials for investigation reasons.
Trump’s attorneys argue in a Sept. 20 filing that the 11th Circuit should deny the Justice Department’s request to regain access to the tranche of sensitive records, claiming the government has “criminalized a document dispute” and that the Justice Department has not proven the documents at issue are classified.
In a late-night response to Trump’s filing, federal prosecutors refer to the former president’s attempts to raise issues about the classified status of the information as a “red herring.”
Separately, Dearie meets for the first time with Justice Department officials and Trump’s legal team in federal court in Brooklyn and looks doubtful of the former president’s reluctance to supplying him with information regarding any prospective declassification of the sensitive materials.
In a letter to Dearie, the former president’s attorneys argue that doing so would require Trump to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent indictment” if such a requirement was not evident in the district court’s order.
On the 21st of September, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit grants the Justice Department’s plea to allow its investigators to regain access to approximately 100 classified papers.
In a 29-page unanimous judgment, Judges Robin Rosenbaum, Britt Grant, and Andrew Brasher state, “For our part, we cannot discern why [Trump] would have a personal interest in or need for any of the one hundred documents with classification markings.” “Classified papers are tagged, for instance with their classification level, to indicate that they are classified.”
The justices — Grant and Brasher were nominated by Trump, while Robinson was selected by former President Barack Obama — also refer to the queries concerning declassification as a “red herring” and write that there is no proof in the record before them that the sensitive materials were declassified.
Trump’s attorneys petition the Supreme Court to interfere in the legal battle over the Mar-a-Lago documents. In the petition, the former president urges the high court to enable the special master to evaluate the 103 classified papers, alleging that the 11th Circuit lacked the authority to stay the district court’s order permitting the third-party arbitrator to review the confiscated materials.
They are not asking the Supreme Court to ban the Justice Department from utilizing the batch of sensitive papers in their ongoing investigation into Trump’s management of government records, as the lower court’s previous judgment did.
In their plea, Trump’s legal team raises doubts about the authenticity of the contested documents, frequently referring to them as “supposed to be classified” and arguing that as president, Trump had “full right” to declassify anything.
“The government’s argument presupposes that certain papers are indeed classified, thereby denying President Trump the option to argue otherwise,” they wrote to the top court. Since President Trump had total discretion over classification determinations during his presidency, the present status of any contested document cannot be determined purely by reference to its marks.
Trump has not yet released proof proving that he declassified the 103 Mar-a-Lago documents.
The Justice Department has until October 11 to reply to Trump’s request, according to Justice Clarence Thomas, who handles emergency applications from the 11th Circuit.