Justice Department attorneys on Tuesday are urging a federal appeals court panel to terminate the use of a special master tasked to review thousands of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence, which has remained a blockade in the government’s investigation.
But before the hearing scheduled Tuesday afternoon in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, Trump filed a last-ditch request to Judge Aileen Cannon, an appointee of his who granted the initial request to assign an independent arbiter to review documents the government deemed classified.
Attorneys for Trump asked Cannon to unseal the affidavit that accompanied the search warrant at his estate, Mar-a-Lago. It’s not immediately clear whether the request is in Cannon’s purview.
TRUMP SPECIAL MASTER ARGUMENTS IN DOJ APPEAL TO BE HEARD IN COURT NEXT WEEK
In the last-ditch filing, Trump’s counsel argues that due to the several investigations into the former president, lawyers are concerned that prosecutors might send some of the seized documents to officials investigating other matters.
“With DOJ and some state officials engaging in various efforts to investigate President Trump, the search smacks of pretextual conduct with hopes of feeding personal documents to prosecutors or agents who might find use for them in unrelated pursuits,” Trump’s attorneys wrote on Tuesday.
A redacted version of the affidavit was made public in August after media organizations sought its release. The DOJ said the blocked elements of the document included information from “a broad range of civilian witnesses,” as well as investigative techniques that, if disclosed, could reveal how to obstruct the investigation.
Trump’s lawyers told Cannon Tuesday that he must be able to review the full affidavit to determine whether “the Fourth Amendment was respected, intentionally subverted, or recklessly violated by a DOJ bent on getting its nose under the Mar-a-Lago tent.”
The Constitution’s Fourth Amendment surrounds unreasonable search and seizure. The Republican former president has accused the DOJ under President Joe Biden’s administration of conducting a “witch hunt” against Trump.
The 11th Circuit will scrutinize Cannon’s requirement that a special master review the materials seized by the FBI’s raid in August. The DOJ has already won a carve-out from the same appeals court that allowed its investigation into the documents marked as classified to continue.
Now, the DOJ seeks to remove entirely the special master review from the case, which is being led by Raymond Dearie.
After a drawing, the judges who will sit on the Tuesday panel are Chief Judge William Pryor, Judge Britt Grant, and Judge Andrew Brasher. Pryor is an appointee of former President George W. Bush, while the other two were appointed by Trump.
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Grant and Brasher were on the panel that granted the DOJ request in September that allowed the FBI to resume its criminal investigation into the roughly 100 documents marked as classified obtained in the search.
Special counsel Jack Smith is now overseeing the Mar-a-Lago investigation and inquiry into Trump’s efforts after the 2020 election to reverse his electoral defeat. Smith is not expected to attend Tuesday’s hearings because he is recovering from an injury in the Netherlands.
