Federal Judge Grants Bid to Appoint a 'Special Master' to Review Docs Taken During FBI Mar-a-Lago Search

Mar. 15, 2025

Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida. Inset: Donald Trump.Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty. Inset: Zach Gibson - Pool/Getty

In her ruling, Cannon set a Friday deadline for Trump’s attorneys and Justice Department prosecutors to submit a list of candidates to serve in the role.

CNN reportsthat Cannon’s ruling also went a step further, describing the seizure of documents from Trump’s home as “in a league of its own.”

“A future indictment,” she added, “based to any degree on property that ought to be returned, would result in reputational harm of a decidedly different order of magnitude.”

The ruling comes after the former president, through his counsel,filedpapers in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of Florida last month, asking that the government not be allowed to look at the documents until a Special Master be appointed in the case.

The Trump’s team filing claims that the government told Trump’s lawyers that “privileged and/or potentially privileged documents” were seized, but specifics of what exactly was taken have yet to be provided.

Trump’s legal team also accused the government of refusing to “provide even the most basic information about what was taken, or why,” and said that the information they did provide sparks concern over Fourth Amendment rights — which protects citizens from unreasonable searches of their homes, documents, and possessions.

The FBI executed the search amid the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) attempt to recover documents that were potentially at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, which is where he returned after leaving the White House at the end of his presidency, per the filing.

Arguing that the documents seized were created when Trump was president, his lawyers state that they are " ‘presumptively privileged’ until proven otherwise," and a Special Master is the only one who can protect their “sanctity.”

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U.S. prosecutors have argued that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,“according to a filing the Justice Department submittedto a federal judge recently.

That filing outlines the government’s previous attempts, over a span of 18 months, to have Trump and his attorneys return documents, including classified material, from Mar-a-Lago.

More than 180 boxes were sent to the National Archives from Mar-a-Lago in January. After the National Archives followed up for more records, Trump’s team handed over 38 documents in June, along with a signed document stating that no other classified documents remained on site.

source: people.com