Department of Justice squares off against Donald Trump’s team over FBI search at Mar-a-Lago
The Department of Justice has until tomorrow to present a “more detailed list” of items that were seized from former president Donald Trump’s club resort and residence, Mar-a-Lago, when the FBI searched the premises earlier this month.
Federal judge Aileen Cannon, in south Florida, has given the DoJ a deadline to produce the details as well as an update on the Biden administration’s review of the boxes of documents and other materials that were taken in that event on 8 August.
The search was part of a criminal investigation into the wrongful taking of “highly classified” government documents by Trump or his team and kept at Mar-a-Lago in exclusive Palm Beach after the Republican then-president’s single term ended on 20 January 2021.
Meanwhile, Cannon will hold a hearing on Thursday in district court in West Palm Beach, south Florida, involving Trump’s request for the appointment of a so-called special master to conduct an independent review of what was seized in that FBI search.
Cannon appears inclined to approve such an appointment.
Last Friday, a redacted copy was released of the affidavit that underpinned the FBI’s application for the search warrant that preceded the search.
The search came following Trump’s handing over of multiple boxes from Mar-a-Lago prior to that visit by the FBI, which the DoJ revealed included hundreds of documents, including top secret material, some of which related to national defense.
Key events
The US justice department’s search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida home this month turned up a “limited” number of documents subject to attorney-client privilege, federal prosecutors said in a court filing this morning, Reuters reports.
The DoJ is updating us in gobbets. This is part of its process where intelligence officials are conducting a classification review of materials seized from Mar-a-Lago during a search by the FBI on 8 August.
As the government sifts the materials, a partially redacted affidavit released last Friday made the case, as Hugo Lowell reported for Guardian US, that the FBI needed to forcibly retrieve the United States government’s most sensitive secrets, especially after it came to suspect Trump and his team were holding on to classified documents despite repeated efforts – including with a subpoena – to secure their return.
Most pressing, according to the affidavit, was that the FBI had identified probable cause that documents containing national defense information were scattered across Mar-a-Lago, potentially jeopardizing intelligence gathering and revealing the identities of human clandestine sources.
You can read more of that report here. And here are Hugo’s five takeaways from Friday’s developments.
The Associated Press adds that the DoJ has now completed its review of potentially privileged documents seized in the search.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp ‘must testify’ before a special grand jury – but …
A judge ruled this morning that Georgia’s Republican governor Brian Kemp must testify before a special grand jury that’s investigating possible illegal attempts by then-president Donald Trump and others to influence the 2020 election in the state – but not until after the November midterm election, the Associated Press reports.
Lawyers for Kemp had argued that immunities related to his position as governor protect him from having to testify.
But Fulton county superior court judge Robert McBurney, who’s overseeing the special grand jury, disagreed and said the governor must testify.
But he did agree to a request from Kemp’s lawyers to delay that testimony until after the 8 November election, in which the Republican governor faces a rematch with Democrat Stacey Abrams.
Either side could appeal the ruling.
A spokesperson for Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis and a lawyer for Kemp did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Here’s my colleague Chris McGreal this weekend on the Georgia case.
Here’s a pithy take on what’s going down in the lawsuit in south Florida over the FBI search for hoarded government secrets at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
It’s from Harvard law professor Larry Tribe commenting on the federal judge dealing with the lawsuit and a piece in the New York Times.
Calling the filings by Trump’s “lawyers” a “hodgepodge of contested legal theories” is kind. But that doesn’t mean they won’t work in front of Trump judges like Aileen Cannon of S.D. Fla. I’ve studied her and see her as a wild card untethered to the law. https://t.co/a6VsCiRy1T
— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) August 29, 2022
Federal judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Donald Trump in late 2020, issued an order two days ago that set out the issues and timetable this week involving the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
To refresh, as the affidavit made public on Friday noted: “The government is conducting a criminal investigation concerning the improper removal and storage of classified information in unauthorized spaces, as well as the unlawful concealment or removal of government records.”
And as my colleague Hugo Lowell reported, the affidavit indicated that the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago earlier this month after speaking to a significant number of witnesses and finding probable cause that national defense information and evidence of obstruction existed at the former president’s property.
Judge Cannon’s order last Saturday came after Trump sued the government over the search and demanded that an overseer – or special master – be appointed to review what’s going on.
She noted her “preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case” and set this Thursday, 1 September, for a hearing on the case, at 1pm in federal court in West Palm Beach – just across the bridge over the lagoon that separates the millionaires’ and billionaires’ ocean-facing playground of Palm Beach from the more plebeian West Palm Beach
Cannon also asked the defendant in the case – the USA as manifested in the Department of Justice – to provide on or before Tuesday 30 August, “under seal”, a “more detailed receipt for property specifying all property seized pursuant to the search warrant executed on August 8, 2022” and a notice “indicating the status of Defendant’s review of the seized property, including any filter review conducted by the privilege review team and any dissemination of materials beyond the privilege review team.”
Department of Justice squares off against Donald Trump’s team over FBI search at Mar-a-Lago
The Department of Justice has until tomorrow to present a “more detailed list” of items that were seized from former president Donald Trump’s club resort and residence, Mar-a-Lago, when the FBI searched the premises earlier this month.
Federal judge Aileen Cannon, in south Florida, has given the DoJ a deadline to produce the details as well as an update on the Biden administration’s review of the boxes of documents and other materials that were taken in that event on 8 August.
The search was part of a criminal investigation into the wrongful taking of “highly classified” government documents by Trump or his team and kept at Mar-a-Lago in exclusive Palm Beach after the Republican then-president’s single term ended on 20 January 2021.
Meanwhile, Cannon will hold a hearing on Thursday in district court in West Palm Beach, south Florida, involving Trump’s request for the appointment of a so-called special master to conduct an independent review of what was seized in that FBI search.
Cannon appears inclined to approve such an appointment.
Last Friday, a redacted copy was released of the affidavit that underpinned the FBI’s application for the search warrant that preceded the search.
The search came following Trump’s handing over of multiple boxes from Mar-a-Lago prior to that visit by the FBI, which the DoJ revealed included hundreds of documents, including top secret material, some of which related to national defense.
US DoJ squares off with Trump team over seized records
Good morning, US politics blog readers, if we can tear you away from the touch-and-go Nasa rocket launch (where US vice-president Kamala Harris is due to speak later today) for a moment, it’s going to be another big week in US politics.
Here’s what’s coming up:
The Department of Justice is under deadline to present a more detailed inventory of what was seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club resort and residence during the search by the FBI for hoarded government secrets on 8 August.
And Trump’s legal team also has a deadline as they prepare for a hearing before a judge in Florida to explain why the former president believes a so-called special master is needed to supervise a review of that FBI search.
Joe Biden will return from Delaware to the White House this morning, before readying for a trip to Pennsylvania to talk up gun control, after another weekend of deadly shootings in the US.
Republican campaign spending is rocketing in states won by Joe Biden in 2020, ahead of the midterm elections and as Democrats are doing better to dig themselves out of the hole of grim prospects this November.
Kamala Harris is at the Kennedy Space Center for thee planned Nasa moonshot rocket launch, you can follow our live coverage here. Why not toggle between that blog and this as the morning unfolds?