On Wednesday, the legal team for former President Donald Trump requested once again that a federal court appoint a Special Master to examine the records taken from his Mar-a-Lago home earlier this month.
In the document, Trump’s attorneys criticised prosecutors for misrepresenting events related to the inquiry and referred to the Aug. 8 execution of a search warrant as “unusual, unwarranted, and legally baseless.”
The Justice Department said that Trump’s effort to appoint the special master “fails for many, independent reasons” and lacks standing in federal court, to which Trump’s lawyers answered in the petition.
There is little doubt…that the issues before this Court focus on a President’s custody of his own presidential records, according to Trump’s lawyers, which called the Justice Department’s case “seriously defective.”
Prosecutors contend, however, that the private documents confiscated from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home belonged to the federal government rather than to him and should be given back to the National Archives.
Trump’s team responded on Wednesday, saying that the idea that presidential records may include sensitive material should never have been a reason for panic and that such documents were subject to discussion with the National Archives.
For their part, the National Archives has made public a number of letters in which they seem ready to cooperate with the former president’s team in order to acquire the data.
Despite promoting this position in the days after the search, Trump’s team did not contend in their brief that any of the relevant records were declassified by the previous administration.
The independent review, according to the prosecution’s earlier petition on Tuesday, would be pointless since they had already seen possibly protected documents and would get in the way of their national security probe.
The Justice Department’s evaluation of the possibly privileged information was questioned by Trump’s team, who said they were attempting “to dodge court scrutiny.”
The lawsuit from Trump claims that if the DOJ is unchecked, it would “impugn, leak, and broadcast certain portions of their investigation with no redress.”
In its court brief on Tuesday, the prosecution said that “obstructive behaviour” probably took place at Mar-a-Lago as a result of Trump’s legal team allegedly attempting to hide or delete certain data from investigators in the months before the Aug. 8 search.
Government attorneys claim that Trump’s staff deceived the Justice Department when they claimed on June 3 that all classified information had been removed from the former president’s home during a “diligent” inspection of the premises.
The Trump administration’s statement on Wednesday consisted of only writing the June 3 incident “has
The Government’s Response has been gravely mischaracterized, “but said that they will withhold more information from the submission”.
Judge Cannon said last week that she had “preliminary intent” to approve Trump’s request for a Special Master. In a federal courtroom in Florida on Thursday, she will hear arguments from the Justice Department and Trump’s legal team.
In response to Cannon’s request, prosecutors also included a snapshot of some of what they claim were the classified materials recovered during the Aug. 8 search at Mar-a-Lago in their bombshell Tuesday filing. Cover sheets containing secret material with the marks “SECRET/SCI” and “TOP SECRET/SCI” were among the documents found in a container in Trump’s office that had been retrieved.
The papers are placed next to a box containing, among other things, a framed Time magazine cover.
The words “Contains sensitive compartmented information up to HCS-P/SI/TK” are clearly visible on the cover sheets.
Trump himself blasted the image on his social media site Truth Social, and the Justice Department’s use of the image was described by the former president’s lawyers as “gratuitous.”
Investigators are looking into potential obstruction of justice by Trump as well as his alleged improper handling of secret papers, notably those that he allegedly moved from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago property before he left office in January 2021.
The National Archives and Records Administration has spent more than a year and a half trying to locate papers that former President Donald Trump took at the conclusion of his term in office.
They first gathered 15 boxes of paperwork in January, and then they sent the case to the Justice Department for more inquiry.
Following subpoenas for documents, requests for security camera footage, and discussions between Trump’s attorneys and some of the top officials of the Justice Department, investigators allegedly gathered proof of possible interference that they claimed justified the execution of the search warrant on August 8.
Trump made the house search public using his social media platform Truth Social, which prompted the Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland to make the search warrant available for public inspection.
Later, a different Florida court ordered that the affidavit—the supporting documentation—should also be made public, albeit with redactions.
According to the [Trump petition], the Special Master and Trump’s team have to have access to an unedited copy of the proof and other supporting documentation, including the precise receipt of confiscated items.