Former President Donald Trump and the US Justice Department (DOJ) submitted on Friday night their nominees to serve as a special master that will review documents recovered during a search of Mar-a-Lago.
According to court documents, Trump’s legal team proposed Raymond J. Dearie, a former district court judge in New York, and Paul Huck Jr., deputy AG for Florida and former general counsel to the Florida governor.
The DOJ, on the other hand, nominated former NY district court judge Barbara S. Jones and Thomas B. Griffith, a former appeals court judge in Washington, DC.
The joint court filing also contained vastly different proposals for how the process should work, including the length of the special master’s investigation, the things she or he will consider, and who will foot the bill for that investigation.
The differences should be sorted out by US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who granted earlier this week Trump’s request for a third-party attorney outside of the government and banned DOJ’s criminal investigators to use the seized materials until the special master finishes their review.
FBI seized 11,000 documents, including more than 100 classified government records, while executing the search warrant in Trump’s residence last month.
Trump’s legal team proposed a 90-day investigation during which the special master could review all seized materials, including classified records, and evaluate potential executive privilege claims, while the Justice Department wants the special master to wrap up its review in five weeks, by October 17.
Also, DOJ argued that the special master’s review shouldn’t include any executive privilege considerations and that he or she shouldn’t touch any documents with classification markings.
The latest legal turn in the DOJ’s criminal investigation into Trump’s potential mishandling of documents- one of the most consequential criminal investigations in modern American history- will immediately catapult into the center whoever ends up getting appointed to fill the role.
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