Demands Special Master And Complains About ‘Gratuitously Included’ Photo Of Top Secret Documents

Topline

Attorneys for former President Donald Trump argued once again Wednesday evening that an independent special master should pore through the documents seized by FBI agents from his Mar-A-Lago home, leaving it up to a federal judge Trump appointed to decide the issue.

Key Facts

In a filing, Trump’s legal team said a special master—or a court-appointed third party—should review the seized documents and separate out any privileged information instead of a “filter team” of DOJ officials, whom the attorneys suggested will “impugn, leak, and publicize select aspects of their investigation with no recourse.”

Trump wants the special master to look for both attorney-client privileged documents and documents possibly covered by executive privilege, a legal doctrine that allows presidents to keep certain communications secret—an idea that the DOJ rejected on Tuesday, arguing executive privilege doesn’t apply in this case.

The former president’s lawyers also criticized the FBI for conducting a search at Mar-A-Lago, claiming the raid was “unprecedented, unnecessary and legally unsupported” and insisting Trump had “voluntarily complied” with a request to turn over government documents that he brought with him to Mar-A-Lago after leaving office.

His team also pushed back against the DOJ for releasing a now-infamous photo of apparently classified documents sprawled out at Mar-A-Lago during the early August search, claiming the DOJ “gratuitously included a photograph of allegedly classified materials, pulled from a container and spread across the floor for dramatic effect.”

Contra

The DOJ pushed back against Trump’s request for a special master in its own filing Tuesday, which said the Mar-A-Lago raid was conducted because prosecutors thought federal records were “likely concealed or removed” to “obstruct the government’s investigation.” The DOJ says a special master isn’t necessary because its own team has already finished reviewing the records and separated out a small amount of possibly privileged information.

What To Watch For

Federal Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee, will hold a hearing Thursday on whether to appoint a special master. The judge said last weekend she had “preliminary intent” to accept Trump’s request.

Tangent

In a post on his platform Truth Social, the former president reacted to the DOJ’s photo of the documents found at Mar-A-Lago—some of which had cover sheets labeled “TOP SECRET”—by insisting FBI agents “took [the papers] out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet.” Trump didn’t appear to deny that he possessed the documents in question. Trump also said the documents had been declassified, an argument the DOJ says Trump’s legal team had never made to investigators.

Key Background

The high-stakes dispute between the DOJ and Trump first came into public view in early August, when FBI agents conducted a dramatic search of Mar-A-Lago for sensitive government documents. But the conflict began heating up more than six months earlier, after the National Archives and Records Administration took 15 boxes of government records from Mar-A-Lago—a set of records the Archives says should’ve stayed in its custody when Trump left office. In June, Trump’s attorneys handed over another round of records and certified that no more documents remained at the Florida estate, but the DOJ says it later learned that classified materials were actually still being stored at Mar-A-Lago, prompting the FBI’s search. In its search warrant, the DOJ suggested it’s investigating possible violations of the Espionage Act plus two other criminal statutes that prohibit concealing or destroying government documents and altering documents to obstruct an investigation.