Former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department on Friday each put forth two candidates to serve as a court-appointed special master who would review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago documents last month.
In a new court filing, the Justice Department proposed Barbara S. Jones, a retired judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, and Thomas B. Griffith, a retired circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Trump’s legal team proposed Raymond J. Dearie, former chief judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Paul Huck Jr., former general counsel to then-Florida Gov. Charlie Crist who also once served as the state’s deputy attorney general.
The list of names comes days after Trump scored an early courtroom victory when a federal judge approved his request for a third-party to review the seized material for potential attorney-client or executive privilege concerns.
That ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, also temporarily blocked parts of the Justice Department’s investigation.
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The Justice Department said in a court filing Thursday that it will appeal Cannon’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
Legal experts largely criticized Cannon’s ruling, saying implementation of her order would be extremely difficult if not impossible, while also taking issue with her argument that the special master should review the documents for potential executive privilege claims, instead of limiting the examination to traditional attorney-client issues.
If a special master is appointed by the court, that individual will review documents the Justice Department said are so sensitive and classified that FBI agents and DOJ attorneys needed additional security clearances to review them.
The Justice Department says FBI agents last month found more than 11,000 pages of government documents that — under the Presidential Records Act — belonged in the custody of the National Archives.
While Trump’s legal team has argued that “unchecked investigators” could not be trusted to separate out privileged documents, the Justice Department has maintained that the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago belong to the government and are not Trump’s “personal records.”
Ryan J. Reilly contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
