WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A federal judge in West Palm Beach did not offer a decision on a request to appoint a special master to oversee documents seized at Mar-a-Lago during a Thursday hearing.
Judge Aileen Cannon said she will issue an opinion "in due course."
Former President Donald Trump's attorney Chrisopther Kise also mentioned the documents were kept by Trump in a location where he frequently used to conduct business when he was president.
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"He is no longer the president," Jay Blatt of the Department of Justice stated in court Thursday. "He did not have the right to take (the documents). We believe what was seized was limited to the scope of the warrant."
Cannon questioned DOJ attorneys about the uniqueness of the case involving a former president and seemed unsure if there was no room for a former president to raise a claim of executive privilege.
DOJ attorneys pointed out the Trump team has not made claims for executive privilege assertions.
Trump attorney James Trusty called the DOJ's actions a criminalized investigation from a dispute with the National Archives.
"The court has to accept it was a valid warrant," Blatt countered.
"What is the harm in appointing a special master?" Cannon asked during the hearing.
DOJ attorneys pointed out there is an ongoing damage assessment by the intelligence community of the documents seized, and the FBI is currently trying to assess damage from these materials.
The judge also expressed concern about some of the documents seized being privileged.
The DOJ pointed out they started their filtering of documents on the day after the search warrant was executed on Aug. 8.
One member of the DOJ filter team said they had examined 520 pages in 64 sets as having the potential of being privileged. The filter team, it was pointed out, operated independently from the investigators, and they offered to supply copies of those documents to Trump's lawyers.
"I think it's becoming more and more serious, and I think the public is seeing more and more information that should cause public concern," Mark Schnapp, who spent more than seven years in the U.S. Attorney's Office in South Florida, told WPTV on Wednesday.
Schnapp said the DOJ filing on Tuesday presented new information on the documents that were supposedly taken from the White House and how much trouble the feds had trying to get them back.
"What the pleadings really show is the effort by the government to get those documents back and the alleged efforts by former President Trump to withhold the documents," Schnapp said.
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The DOJ said the former president has no legal claim to the records and that having a special master come in and sort through the documents would harm national security and impede the investigation.
"If what the Trump lawyers are arguing, in part, is that he has an executive privilege against withholding documents from the current administration, in my view that's absurd," Schnapp said.
In August, the FBI seized nearly three dozen boxes containing about 100 classified documents from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach.
Cannon had said on Saturday, before the latest arguments in the matter, that her "preliminary intent" was to appoint a special master.
It was also not clear who might serve as that outside expert. In some past high-profile cases, the role has been filled by a former federal judge.
Cannon was nominated by Trump in 2020 and confirmed by the Senate 56-21 later that year. She is a former assistant U.S. attorney in Florida, handling mainly criminal appeals.
Portions of this article courtesy of the Associated Press
