A late Tuesday evening Justice Department filing has perhaps revealed the most to date regarding the August 8 raid on Trump’s personal home, Mar-a-Lago. The filing is an additional response to the Trump legal team’s request for the appointment of a “special master,” an independent party who will be tasked with combing through the seized materials in order to determine documents that shouldn’t have been removed from the Trump residence due to privilege.
The DOJ had previously filed a motion that said the special master appointment was unnecessary due to the fact that the Justice Department had already utilized a “taint team” to peruse the documents before handing them over to prosecutors. In the filing, the DOJ claimed that they had “found a limited set” of documents that might be considered privilege. However, the additional filing from Tuesday would explain further.
The second filing by the Justice Department claims that “classified documents were likely concealed,” and may have been hidden in other areas inside Mar-a-Lago. Both Trump and his legal team have contended that the White House records at Mar-a-Lago were in a storage room. Investigators visited the site in June, and they requested a stronger lock be placed on that door of the storage space, with which the Trump legal team says they complied.
Tuesday’s filing alleges “documents were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
The filing went on to say that the Justice Department decided to obtain a search warrant after the agency “developed evidence that a search limited to the Storage Room would not have uncovered all the classified documents at the Premises.”
This would explain why agents allegedly went into Melania Trump’s wardrobe closet and the master bedroom while conducting the search.
The filing sheds some light on a question that Americans have been asking since the raid – why did the FBI decide to raid the home when there was cooperation? The filing claims that the FBI was able to recover “twice as many documents” with some type of classified marking than they had when allowing for President Trump and his representatives to conduct a “diligent search.” The filing reads that those investigating the matter believed that cooperation was waning on the part of the Trump team.
While the Justice Department has already made one filing this week regarding the special master, the second filing says that the request for an independent reviewer of the documents “fails for multiple, independent reasons.” The filing says that allowing for a special master could be detrimental to national security.
The Justice Department contends in this second filing that the filter team has already separated what could be considered privileged material; however, it does not detail when those materials could be returned to the Trump legal team.
The late evening filing claims that if Judge Aileen Cannon does decide to appoint a special master, to do so would impede the ongoing criminal investigation regarding the 45th president. Furthermore, the independent reviewer would stop those from the Intelligence Community from their current review of the materials seized. The filing maintains intelligence officials are determining whether the “improper storage” of the materials have created a national security risk.
The Justice Department filing also said that the filter team determined that the materials that could be considered privilege did “not involve any of the types of circumstances that have warranted the appointment” of an independent reviewer.
Some of the documents seized included a menu from a White House dinner party, a letter from Barack Obama to President Trump, and a letter to Trump from the leader of North Korea. The Tuesday filing claims these items – and other items considered personal items – were “not subject to return.” In particular, the DOJ holds that these items can’t be returned because they were mixed in with allegedly classified documents.
A hearing to determine whether Judge Aileen Cannon will appoint a special master is scheduled for tomorrow. The judge released an order Saturday that hints she is inclined to make the appointment.
