In the new filing Friday night, Trump pointed to some additional legal discussion about case law that he said supported his request. One of those cases involved Rudy Giuliani’s former lawyer. Nowhere in the deposition did Trump suggest that material involving attorney-client privilege was seized during the FBI’s search of his resort. The new response appeared to fall short of the treatment Cannon sought. Trump did not elaborate on exactly what he hoped a special master — a third-party lawyer — would filter out, other than general allusions to “privileged and potentially privileged material.” She also did not include in the filing a proposal for immediate action by the judge — such as a request for a temporary stay or preliminary injunction — despite the judge’s request that she submit “the exact relief requested, including any request for injunctive relief pending the resolution of Proposal”. Trump claimed that the newly released affidavit the FBI filed in court to obtain the search warrant raises “more questions than answers.” “The prepared affidavit underscores why this motion should be granted, as it provides almost no information that would allow Mowand to understand why his home was raided or what was taken from his home,” Trump wrote in the filing.
The filing follows the release of the redacted affidavit
Trump’s Friday submission came hours after the Justice Department unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit he used to obtain the warrant, which contained new details about the FBI’s investigation and the highly sensitive nature of previously classified material. recovered from Palm Beach. Florida resort. In her order challenging Trump in the probe, Cannon told the former president’s lawyers to explain their arguments for why the court has the ability to intervene at this time, explain exactly what Trump is asking and clarify whether the Department Justice has been served with Trump’s special primary motion. Cannon, a Trump appointee, wasn’t alone in finding that Monday’s initial proposal lacked some of the legal elements one would expect with a request like Trump’s. Several legal experts questioned the seriousness of Trump’s court effort after Monday’s initial filing. First, Trump waited two weeks after the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago investigation was conducted to formally ask the court to intervene. And his filing Monday did not have the kind of motion — such as a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining request — that would prompt swift action from the court. Discussion of Trump’s legal arguments for why the judge had the authority to grant his request was thin. Instead, much of Monday’s testimony was filled with politically charged rhetoric. Among other things, Monday’s complaint bragged about Trump’s 2024 poll numbers, reiterated his conflict with the FBI’s 2020 Trump-Russia investigation and repeated the full text of a “message” he allegedly wanted to send through lawyers of to Attorney General Merrick Garland about the “Furious” mood the country was in after the raid.
What the department said about how it’s looking at the Mar-a-Lago evidence
Trump’s new effort to improve his bid for a special master came after a recent affidavit released new details about how the Justice Department approached the investigation. The FBI told the court when it sought the warrant that it planned to send a “privilege review team” of agents to Mar-a-Lago along with the agents working on the investigation. The privilege review team will be tasked with searching the room referred to as “Office 45” and will “conduct a review of the seized material” from there “to locate and segregate documents or data that may contain privileged attorney-client information. ”
The affidavit set out the procedures the privilege review team would use to filter out material containing privileged information. If the privilege review team believed that a document obtained might be privileged, it would either ask the court to consider whether it was privileged. cooperate with the potential beneficiary to determine whether he was privileged, including, if necessary, by seeking judicial review; or delay the judicial process while the materials were withheld from the investigators working on the case.
“If at any point law enforcement personnel assigned to the investigation subsequently identify data or documents that they believe may be potentially attorney-client privileged, they shall cease consideration of such identifying data or documents and refer the material to the Review Privilege Panel for further review by the Privilege Review Panel,” the FBI said in a filing with US Magistrate Bruce Rinehart, who authorized the investigation.
In the affidavit, the FBI said it found 184 classified documents while examining 15 boxes recovered from Mar-a-Lago in January.
“Furthermore, there is probable cause to believe that additional documents containing classified [National Defense Information] or that presidential records subject to record retention requirements currently remain at the PREMISES,” the affidavit said. “There is also probable cause to believe that evidence of obstruction will be found at the PREMISES.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
