Special Master Says Trump Can’t Have His Cake And Eat It Too

The special foreman, who was tasked with reviewing documents seized at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last month, reportedly told the former president’s team that during a hearing Tuesday in his courtroom, they didn’t “have your cake and could eat him too”.

Special Master, U.S. Judge Raymond Dearie, made the comment after Trump’s attorneys resisted his efforts to support the former president’s claims that the sensitive documents found at his home had been declassified, according to Politico reporter Josh Gerstein. who posted updates on the hearing via Twitter.

FBI agents conducted a search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Aug. 8 and seized more than 11,000 documents, including about 100 with classification marks. Trump and his allies have strongly condemned the raid and seizure, while the former president has denied any wrongdoing over the documents.

The appointment of the special master was sparked by a request from Trump’s team and eventually approved by Judge Aileen Cannon. A legal analyst suggested Monday that Trump may have “miscalculated” when he asked for Dearie as a special master from a pool of recommendations.

Trump has tried to justify possession of the classified documents by saying what he took was declassified. But Mick Mulvaney, who was Trump’s acting chief of staff from January 2019 to March 2020, told Newsmax last month that while a president has broad powers to declassify documents, “there is a formal structure for doing so.”

He also said that there had been no standing order to release documents during his tenure as chief of staff, but noted that one could have been implemented later.

Even if the former president’s team could prove the documents were declassified at Mar-a-Lago, the three potential violations of federal law, including part of the Espionage Act, listed in the Mar-a-Lago search warrant are unnecessary The documents must be classified, former US Attorney Barbara McQuade told MSNBC The Katie Phang Show Last month.

While Trump has maintained his declassification statement, his legal team has not made the same argument in the legal filings.

In a court filing Monday ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, Trump’s attorneys argued that they should not be expected to provide further details about the alleged declassification.

The attorneys wrote in the filing that Dearie’s original plan to review the documents by November 30 would result in them having to “fully and expressly disclose a defense to the merits of any subsequent charges, without such a requirement in the order.” of the district court would be apparent”.

Instead, such disclosure should be made in an application for the return of property, they argued.

Still, news reports indicate that Dearie raised the issue repeatedly during Tuesday’s hearing at the Brooklyn Federal Court Building.

news week reached out to a Trump attorney for comment.