The Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s attorneys said they are deeply divided over whether classified records seized by the FBI from the former president’s Florida estate Mar a Lago should be reviewed by a special master.
The Justice Department and the Trump team each put forth a separate list of candidates for the job.
The U.S. Justice Department made a joint filing. In it, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that Trump’s legal team is insisting that the special master should be allowed to review “all seized materials, including documents with classification markings.”
Trump’s lawyers also want the special master to review the records for possible executive privilege claims. However, the justice department opposes this mandate.
A special master is an independent third party. It is sometimes appointed by a federal court to comb through sensitive records that could be privileged and classified, and then segregate them from others that are not privileged so they are not viewed by prosecutors and do not taint a criminal investigation.
Both sides also proposed two different sets of possible candidates for the job. They are expected to tell the court their views on each others’ candidates today.
The Justice Department said it is proposing two candidates for special master: Retired judge Barbara Jones, or retired judge Thomas Griffith. Jones previously served as a special master in cases involving Trump’s former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen. Griffith is an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush who served on the D.C. appeals court from 2005-2020.
Trump’s team wants other people. Trump’s set of lawyers has picked Raymond Dearie and Paul Huck.
Dearie is a judge on senior status in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and a former U.S. Attorney who served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Huck is the Former Deputy Attorney General of Florida and a former partner with Jones Day, a law firm that previously represented Trump’s campaign.
Both sides also said they disagree on whether the special master should be required to consult with the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, which is tasked with preserving executive branch documents.
In addition, neither side could agree on who should pay for the special master.
Trump’s team wants to split the costs, but the Department of Justice says that responsibility lies with Trump and that Trump should pay since he requested it in the first place.
Trump is under investigation for holding onto about 100 classified and highly classified government records after he left the White House, stashing them in his Florida home in January 2021. The government is also investigating possible obstruction of the probe.
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