Judge Approves Trump’s Special Master Request to Review Docs from Mar-a-Lago Raid
A federal judge has approved former President Donald Trump’s request for a special master, or a neutral third party, to pore over thousands of classified documents seized from his home last month.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon will allow for an independent party to look at materials, some of which Trump said were covered by either executive privilege or attorney/client privilege.
Cannon wrote the special master will review “the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.”
Trump’s attorneys will work with the DOJ to create a list of possible candidates. The list must be submitted by Friday.
CNN’s Kara Scannell reported CNN had just obtained documents from the court, and the network was still reviewing them:
After hearing out the arguments on Thursday and coming out with this ruling, today on Labor Day, [Cannon] said she’s appointing the master that the former president had requested to review these documents seized a Mar-a-Lago, which we learned about last week.
There were thousands of pages of documents and hundreds of classified documents. The judge is saying she will appoint a master, a third-party, independent person to review the materials for any additional materials that may have been picked up in the search and for issues involving executive and attorney/client executive privilege.
The appointment of the special master will temporarily snag part of the government’s investigation into classified documents found in Trump’s possession on Aug. 8.
Judge Cannon BLOCKS prosecutors from continuing their criminal investigation until the special master completes his/her work:
“[T]he Court does not find that a temporary special master review under the present circumstances would cause undue delay [to the investigation].”
— Steven Portnoy (@stevenportnoy) September 5, 2022
Attorneys for Trump had asked Cannon to appoint a special master, and she signaled she was leaning toward granting the motion.
Federal prosecutors fought Trump’s request.
The Washington Post reported:
The Justice Department argued during the hearing that Trump has no right to a special master review, and that allowing one now would be unprecedented because the seized documents do not belong to him. If the judge does entertain his request, they say the appointment of a special master is “unnecessary” given the processes already in place to scan for privilege issues and would get in the way of a parallel intelligence review.
Read Cannon’s full decision here.
Watch above, via CNN.
