Explore More
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge on Thursday agreed to make public a more detailed inventory of the items seized during the FBI’s raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision came during a West Palm Beach hearing on whether to grant Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the trove of documents taken by the FBI.
Cannon declined to issue an immediate ruling on Trump’s motion, but said the sealed inventory list could be made public after a request from several media outlets earlier this week.
The judge, who last week said she was inclined to grant the special master motion, said she would issue a written ruling on that matter in “due course.” She did not elaborate on when the more detailed inventory list might be made available.
Trump’s legal team had argued during the two-hour hearing that their ongoing battle with the Department of Justice over the push to appoint a special master was mundane and not akin to a national security scandal, saying it was an “overdue library book scenario.”
The former president’s lawyers accused a “politicized” Department of Justice of trying to thwart their efforts to have special master — an independent third party — installed so that federal investigators could just go “unchecked, unobserved, unmonitored.”
Trump’s side wants to have an independent third party review the trove of documents to see if any of the seized materials are protected by claims of attorney-client privilege or executive privilege.
Trump’s newly appointed attorney, Chris Kise, insisted the third party would ensure transparency and public trust — adding there was a need to “lower the temperature on both sides.”
But federal prosecutors argued that such an appointment isn’t necessary because investigators have already reviewed the documents and “a limited set of materials” that contain such privileged information.
The DOJ attorneys also said installing a special master would only complicate and slow down the investigation due, in part, to the potential appointee having to gain top security clearances to review some of the classified documents.
Cannon pressed the government on that point during the hearing, asking, “Ultimately what is the harm?”
The DOJ attorneys went on to argue Trump’s claim that some of the documents fell under executive privilege didn’t apply in this case — simply because he is no longer in the White House.
“He’s no longer president. He did not have the right to take those documents. He was unlawfully in possession of them,” Jay Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, told the court.
The hearing comes less than two days after the Justice Department laid out fresh details on its ongoing criminal probe into whether Trump illegally kept government records and tried to conceal some of them from the FBI.
Prosecutors argued in the Tuesday filing that Trump’s records custodian had falsely certified in June that a “diligent search” had been conducted and all government records had been returned to the government.
The Justice Department also included a photo of the seized documents in its latest filing, which showed some materials marked “Top Secret” and “Secret.”
During Thursday’s hearing, Trump’s attorneys blasted the release of the photo as “selective leaking” on behalf of the government.
Meanwhile, Trump’s attorneys had downplayed the government’s concerns about classified materials found in his home during the Aug. 8 raid in a filing late Wednesday.
His team also accused the DOJ of escalating the situation by executing its search warrant — even after Trump’s side handed over boxes of documents to the National Archives in January and allowed federal agents to “come to his home and provide security advice” in June.
“Simply put, the notion that Presidential records would contain sensitive information should have never been cause for alarm,” his lawyers wrote in their latest filing.
ncG1vNJzZmimqaW8tMCNnKamZ2Jlf3N7j3JmaWlfqb%2B2uc9mm6iiXZ67bq%2FOrqmtZaSksaLFjKitnqpdqL2mr8iao2alkajBpr6Mn6arZaOatruxw2akmqpdlnqtrcaoZJ2nk6q6prrTrGY%3D