WASHINGTON — The Justice Division on Tuesday night time said that appointing a particular grasp “is pointless and would considerably hurt vital governmental pursuits, together with nationwide safety pursuits.”
The court docket submitting got here in response to former President Donald Trump‘s request on Aug. 22 — two weeks after the Mar-a-Lago search — for a special master to review the paperwork seized from his Florida property.
U.S. District Decide Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, signaled over the weekend that she was inclined to grant the previous president’s request and appoint a 3rd social gathering to assessment the paperwork to make sure they do not comprise info protected by attorney-client privilege. The Justice Division has mentioned {that a} authorities filter staff that is separate from the investigation had already recognized “a restricted set of supplies” probably containing privileged info.
Forward of Tuesday night time’s submitting, the Justice Division had asked permission to file a response of as much as 40 pages to Trump’s particular grasp request “to be able to adequately tackle the authorized and factual points raised” by Trump’s authorized staff.
The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago on Aug. 8 got here after in depth discussions with the Nationwide Archives and Justice Division officers over almost 18 months.
A redacted affidavit that laid out possible trigger for the search revealed that the Nationwide Archives referred the matter to the FBI after it discovered “a variety of categorized data” in 15 packing containers that Trump turned over to the Nationwide Archives earlier this yr. A subsequent FBI assessment of the packing containers in Might confirmed that 14 of the 15 packing containers contained paperwork with classification markings. A complete of 184 distinctive paperwork bearing classification markings have been discovered, together with 25 marked “TOP SECRET.”
The FBI was licensed to grab any paperwork with categorized markings, together with the containers the categorized paperwork have been present in, together with any authorities or presidential data created throughout Trump’s time in workplace and any “proof of figuring out alteration, destruction, or concealment of any authorities and/or Presidential Information, or any paperwork with classification markings.”
Among the many documents retrieved from Mar-a-Lago have been Roger Stone’s clemency paperwork, details about the president of France, and a trove of confidential and categorized paperwork, together with presidential data. FBI brokers seized 26 packing containers, in addition to a leather-bound field of paperwork containing High Secret / Delicate Compartmented Info, in line with the property receipt of things recovered.
In a separate filing Tuesday, a number of former federal prosecutors who served throughout Republican administrations — Donald B. Ayer, Gregory A. Brower, John J. Farmer Jr., Stuart M. Gerson, Peter D. Keisler, William F. Weld, and former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman — wrote that “no matter one’s political opinions, it’s clear that there is no such thing as a authorized help for the reduction requested by the previous President.”
