Topline
President Donald Trump will get back some of the documents the Justice Department seized at Mar-A-Lago, the special master reviewing the documents ordered Friday, though they are limited to documents that aren’t privileged or government materials and the DOJ had already offered to give them back in August.
Former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort is seen on February 10, 2021, in Palm Beach, … [+]
Key Facts
U.S. District Judge Raymond Dearie, the third-party special master reviewing the documents seized at Mar-A-Lago, ordered Friday for some original documents to be returned to Trump by October 10, noting both the DOJ and Trump team agreed they could be given back.
Earlier this week, a court filing that was briefly unsealed and made public by Bloomberg revealed that the DOJ’s Filter Team—which sorted out potentially privileged materials before Dearie was appointed—had offered to return the materials to Trump on August 30.
Instead, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon used those nongovernmental documents as a justification for the special master to be appointed, noting on September 5 that the filter team said there were materials like “medical documents, correspondence related to taxes and accounting information.”
The DOJ said in the filing that those documents “do not appear to be privileged,” and are “all either legal in nature . . . or otherwise potentially sensitive” and do not appear to be presidential records, government documents or at all classified.
Among the approximately 300 pages of documents to be returned, according to the filing, are a letter from Trump’s physician from 2016; documents related to various Trump-related lawsuits; accounting and tax documents; a confidential settlement agreement between the PGA and Trump Golf; invoices for legal fees; the email accepting Trump’s resignation from the Screen Actors Guild; a draft nondisclosure agreement; and a signed letter from a Trump legal advisor to the Biden campaign.
“Being deprived of potentially significant personal documents . . . creates a real harm” for Trump and gives him an interest in the seized documents that justified a special master going through them, Cannon ruled.
Big Number
More than 11,000. That’s how many documents the DOJ seized at Mar-A-Lago, making the subset of materials returned to Trump only a tiny portion of what the government had in its possession. That includes approximately 100 documents that are marked classified, some of which had the highest top-secret designations.
What To Watch For
The DOJ and Trump’s attorneys, as part of Dearie’s review, are still going through other materials to determine which may be covered under attorney-client privilege or executive privilege and kept out of the Justice Department’s investigation. Dearie has been ordered to complete his review by December 16, and a status conference as part of the review will next take place on October 18.
Key Background
The DOJ searched Mar-A-Lago on August 8 as part of its ongoing investigation into whether Trump violated federal law by bringing White House documents back to Florida with him, which under the Presidential Records Act should belong to the National Archives. Trump asked a judge to appoint a special master to review the seized materials two weeks later, which led to Cannon—herself a Trump appointee—naming Dearie to oversee the review. In addition to the materials Dearie ordered to be returned Friday, Trump has also said the DOJ took multiple passports of his from Mar-A-Lago, which the DOJ has already reportedly returned to Trump. Dearie’s order came days after Trump railed against the government having possession of his documents, claiming in a statement on Tuesday that the National Archives isn’t trustworthy and stating, “I want my documents back!” The Justice Department believes Trump may still have not turned over all the classified government documents in his possession, multiple news outlets reported Thursday.
Further Reading
Trump Mar-A-Lago Investigation: What To Know As Ex-President Goes To Supreme Court (Forbes)
Mar-a-Lago ‘Filter Team’ Found Only 300 Seized Records to Return to Trump: Report (Bloomberg)
What the FBI took from Trump, according to an accidentally unsealed list (Washington Post)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/10/07/trump-to-get-some-mar-a-lago-documents-back-special-master-rules/