Tensions flare over special master process
The parallel “special master” process spawned by the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate has slowed the Justice Department’s criminal investigation and exposed simmering tensions between department prosecutors and lawyers for the former president.
The probe into the presence of top-secret government information at Mara-lago continues. But barbed comments in the past week’s court filings have laid bare deep disagreements related to the special master’s work. And the filings have made clear that a process the Trump team initially sought has not been playing to the president’s advantage.
A look at where things stand: has been hemmed in by a federal appeals court. That court last week ruled overwhelmingly in favor of the Justice Department, concluding that it did not have to share with Dearie for his review the roughly 100 documents with classified markings taken during the Aug. 8 search.
That leaves for his evaluation the roughly 11,000 other, unclassified documents — which a Trump lawyer said actually total roughly 200,000 pages — recovered by the FBI.
That filing matters because Trump and some of his allies have raised unsupported suggestions that the agents who searched his home may have planted evidence. If his lawyers affirm the inventory’s accuracy, they will be contradicting their own client’s claims and also acknowledging the presence of classified materials in the home.
The Justice Department this week made what it called minor revisions to the inventory, but said it was an otherwise full and accurate accounting of what was taken.
Yet newly disclosed correspondence suggests the Trump team is balking at making its own public assessment of the inventory’s accuracy. Trusty said in a letter Sunday that the directive that it do so goes beyond what Cannon had envisioned when she appointed Dearie and that, besides, the Trump team does not have access to the classified documents it would need for such a review.
The Justice Department, for its part, suggested that the Trump team should not be able to avoid stating its position on the record or following other of Dearie’s directives.
“The Special Master needs to know that he is reviewing all of the materials seized from Mara-lago on August 8, 2022 — and no additional materials — before he categorizes the seized documents and adjudicates privilege claims,” the department said.
The letter Tuesday ended with this tart reminder to Trump and his lawyers: “Plaintiff brought this civil, equitable proceeding. He bears the burden of proof.”