Trump files motion over Mar-a-Lago search

Former President Donald Trump has filed a new lawsuit in which he requests that a special master be appointed to analyze the records taken by the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month. According to court filings filed Monday, he has also urged the court to prevent the Justice Department from further scrutinizing the evidence until that happens.

Attorneys for the former president wrote in the filing in the Southern District of Florida that a special master — a court-appointed monitor who would go over the evidence and review its contents for any privileged information — is needed to protect Trump’s constitutional rights following what they called a “unprecedented” law-enforcement operation.

Calling for a “careful review process,” Trump’s attorneys also ask the Justice Department to provide them with a more detailed accounting of what the FBI took from his Florida resort and return any property not within the scope of the search warrant.

That search warrant, approved by Attorney General Merrick Garland and then the court, and later released to the public at the Justice Department’s request, revealed that investigators are looking into whether federal statutes protecting national defense information were violated when documents from the Trump White House were brought from Washington, D.C., to his Palm Beach mansion in January 2021 instead of being filed with the National Archives, as required by federal law.

According to the public revelation, the FBI gathered boxes labeled top secret, secret, and confidential, as well as documents labeled “top secret/sensitive compartmented material,” images, and information about France’s president, among other things.

As per Trump’s lawsuit, the search warrant was “overbroad,” and investigators obtained “presumptively protected” documents written during his tenure as president, and as such, “it is irrational to enable the prosecuting team to analyze them without sufficient protections.”

The brief on Monday does not answer why Trump brought the records from the White House to Mar-a-Lago in the first place, nor does it deny investigators’ claims that some of the boxes confiscated by the FBI included national security material.

According to CBS News, filtration teams have analyzed and continue to scrutinize the papers seized to guarantee that anything that should not be in the hands of the government is returned. A law enforcement source said last week that prosecutors alerted Trump’s legal team that passports belonging to the previous president had been scooped up in the operation and were later returned after being spotted by such filter teams.

However, Trump’s legal team contends in their application for a special master that “merely ‘sufficient’ precautions are not acceptable when the topic at hand involves not only President Trump’s constitutional rights, but also the preservation of executive privilege.”

Trump claims that unless such precautions are taken, investigators should be banned from further analyzing the papers and other items.

“A federal court granted the Aug. 8 search warrant at Mar-a-Lago based on the requisite finding of reasonable cause.” The Department is aware of the motion filed this evening, according to Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley, who added, “The United States will submit its response in court.”

Trump’s lawsuit also claims that the receipt of property contained with the search warrant disclosure supplied to his legal counsel following the completion of the Aug. 8 search is insufficient and that further information is required.

The opening page of the brief focuses on a political argument rather than a legal one to throw doubt on the legitimacy of the search.

On page one, his attorneys claim that “Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run,” before accusing the government of using law enforcement “as a weapon for political purposes” in carrying out the Mar-a-Lago search.

Garland issued an unusual statement to the public in the days following the execution of the search warrant, emphasizing that the search at Mar-a-Lago was a question of “applying the law equitably.”

“”The basic premise of the Justice Department and of our democracy is faithful devotion to the rule of law,” the attorney general said. “Upholding the rule of law means enforcing the law equitably, without fear or favor.” That is exactly what the Justice Department is doing under my supervision. All Americans have the right to an evenhanded application of the law, due process, and the assumption of innocent.”

Nonetheless, in Monday’s petition, the former president alleged that federal investigators “have proven a readiness to treat President Trump differently than any other citizen,” and that his counsel sought to relay a message to Garland prior to the attorney general’s public remark.

According to the complaint, one of Trump’s attorneys met with Jay Bratt, the head of the Justice Department’s Counterintelligence and Export Control section, and told him, “President Trump wants the Attorney General to know that he has been hearing from people all over the country about the raid,” later adding, “Whatever I can do to take down the heart, to bring the pressure down, just let us know.”

The complaint on Monday includes further purported facts concerning conversations between Trump’s staff and the Justice Department before to the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

According to the paper, on May 11, a federal grand jury issued a subpoena “seeking material carrying classified marks,” to which Trump says he obliged by asking his staff to investigate the boxes carried to Florida during the presidential transition. According to the brief, on June 3, at the request of Trump’s legal team, Bratt and three FBI agents flew to Mar-a-Lago to recover any relevant papers and check the room in which they were held.

On June 22, investigators obtained footage from Mar-a-security Lago’s cameras.

According to a U.S. official, federal investigators are now extensively scrutinizing video evidence gathered, which shows personnel at Mar-a-Lago having access to storage places where former President Donald Trump’s papers from his property were being stored — including some sensitive documents.

The video demonstrating this possible access to a site with very sensitive data continues to be a source of worry within the Justice Department, but a source close to Trump’s attorneys said they are aware of it and advised against reading too much into it.

A magistrate judge in the same federal district is debating whether to unseal a redacted version of the information that sparked the Mar-a-Lago search in the first place.

The question is whether the media, and hence the public, have such a compelling interest in seeing the search warrant affidavit — which generally provides particular information about evidence — that Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart should take the unprecedented step of disclosing it.

Multiple news organizations, including CBS News, have petitioned the court to unseal the affidavit, but the Justice Department has responded that there is a need to “guard the integrity of an ongoing law enforcement investigation that implicates national security.”

In the face of Justice Department objections, the court wants to consider proposed redactions before reaching a final decision on what may be released.

“I cannot say at this point that partial redactions will be so extensive that they will result in a meaningless disclosure,” Reinhart wrote, addressing the Justice Department’s argument that they would so heavily redact the record that it would become worthless to the public. “I may ultimately reach that conclusion after hearing further from the Government.”

Investigative methods and the identities of FBI agents and witnesses are at stake, prosecutors argued, and releasing the record to the public might “chill” cooperation from other potential witnesses.

“We are demanding that all items wrongfully taken from my home be IMMEDIATELY returned,” Trump himself said in a statement late Monday.