A federal judge will release a detailed list of items the FBI took from former President Donald Trump's Florida residence, according to The Wall Street Journaland The Guardian.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon heard arguments on Thursday for nearly 2 hours after former President Donald Trump requested a special master review documents taken during last month’s search of his Mar-a-Lago resort.
The judge did not give an oral ruling on the special master request during Thursday's hearing and instead will issue a written ruling, MSNBC reported.
The DOJ said 28 boxes that contained confidential information were taken from Mar-a-Lago earlier this month. Some of the information was considered top secret.
Trump’s request to have a third party review the documents is opposed by the Department of Justice. Trump’s legal team has argued that last month’s search was politically motivated and that the DOJ cannot be trusted with the documents.
The DOJ said that documents were “concealed and removed” from a storage room and that efforts were “likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
As part of its standard procedure following searches, a filter team sorted documents relevant to the investigation while removing those where attorney-client privilege could be invoked. The filter team involves a different group of agents who are not involved in the probe.
The DOJ’s response also claimed that Trump does not have legal standing over the presidential records, saying that those records do not belong to Trump. Prosecutors also say that the “appointment of a special master is unnecessary and would significantly harm important governmental interests, including national security interests. Appointment of a special master is disfavored in a case such as this.”
Trump has claimed that he declassified the documents before he left office.
“Number one, it was all declassified,” Trump wrote. “Number two, they didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it anytime they wanted without playing politics and breaking into Mar-a-Lago. It was in secured storage, with an additional lock put on as per their request. They could have had it anytime they wanted—and that includes LONG ago.”
