Judge Gives Trump Until Friday To Better Explain Why He Wants A Special Master Over Mar A Lago Documents

Cannon also asked Trump’s team to consider any impact the request might have on a separate review by a judge on whether portions of the still-sealed FBI affidavit detailing probable cause can be released. research. The judge’s order shows many of the ways in which the complaint filed by Trump fell short of what would be expected from a court filing seeking the appointment of a special master — particularly in an investigation as high-stakes as this one. executed at FBI Mar-a-Lago earlier this month “What he’s saying is, ‘What are you doing in front of me?’ Mark Schnapp, a Florida criminal defense attorney who spent seven years working for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, told CNN. Generally speaking, it is not outside the legal norm for Trump to want a special master involved in examining evidence seized from his Florida residence. His former attorney, Michael Cohen, successfully sought the appointment of a special master when Cohen’s office and residences were searched by the FBI in 2018. But Trump waited two weeks to make such a request, raising concern because of how far along in the process the Justice Department is likely to review what it seized at Mar-a-Lago. (For the review, the Justice Department uses what’s known as a “spot team,” which is a group of prosecutors who don’t work on the investigation in question and filter out material that shouldn’t be turned over to investigators.) And when Trump filed his request in court, the complaint leaned heavily on political charges while being light on the kind of legal argument that would explain to a court why it should intervene and what authority it should have to do so. When Trump’s lawyers cited the court rules they said gave the judge the authority to grant the request, they cited the rules of civil procedure, without any explanation of why those rules should apply in a context involving a criminal search warrant. Trump also did not file with the complaint the kind of separate request — such as a motion for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction — that would speed up the timeline for the judge to consider what Trump is asking. Nor did Trump’s legal team submit statements — meaning statements from lawyers said to have interacted with the Justice Department before and after the investigation — to support the complaint’s factual allegations. Instead, the complaint restated allegations about the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election while dramatically suggesting that the Justice Department’s actions were motivated by a desire to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. It also included the full text of a warning he was supposedly trying to give through his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Schnapp said Trump’s testimony Monday read more like a political message than a legal document. “They really didn’t ask for anything. That’s crazy,” Schnapp said. “They didn’t call for anything to be done in the immediate future to slow it down, even though that’s what they claimed they were doing.” Trump’s move to file a separate case assigned to Judge Cannon, rather than filing the request with the judge who signed the warrant, also caused confusion among outside legal experts. It appears that Trump’s lawyers even ran into procedural issues with the filing of the lawsuit and with their efforts to appear in the case. The clerk posted a notice on the docket indicating the complaint had been “contractually filed” when it “should have been filed electronically,” according to local court rules. Another notice from the clerk said Trump lawyers seeking special admission to join the case because they weren’t disbarred in Florida also didn’t follow local rules. They were given another chance to get their performances right. This story has been updated with additional details.

title: “Judge Gives Trump Until Friday To Better Explain Why He Wants A Special Master Over Mar A Lago Documents " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Mary Behr”

Cannon also asked Trump’s team to consider any impact the request might have on a separate review by a judge on whether portions of the still-sealed FBI affidavit detailing probable cause can be released. research. The judge’s order shows many of the ways in which the complaint filed by Trump fell short of what would be expected from a court filing seeking the appointment of a special master — particularly in an investigation as high-stakes as this one. executed at FBI Mar-a-Lago earlier this month “What he’s saying is, ‘What are you doing in front of me?’ Mark Schnapp, a Florida criminal defense attorney who spent seven years working for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, told CNN. Generally speaking, it is not outside the legal norm for Trump to want a special master involved in examining evidence seized from his Florida residence. His former attorney, Michael Cohen, successfully sought the appointment of a special master when Cohen’s office and residences were searched by the FBI in 2018. But Trump waited two weeks to make such a request, raising concern because of how far along in the process the Justice Department is likely to review what it seized at Mar-a-Lago. (For the review, the Justice Department uses what’s known as a “spot team,” which is a group of prosecutors who don’t work on the investigation in question and filter out material that shouldn’t be turned over to investigators.) And when Trump filed his request in court, the complaint leaned heavily on political charges while being light on the kind of legal argument that would explain to a court why it should intervene and what authority it should have to do so. When Trump’s lawyers cited the court rules they said gave the judge the authority to grant the request, they cited the rules of civil procedure, without any explanation of why those rules should apply in a context involving a criminal search warrant. Trump also did not file with the complaint the kind of separate request — such as a motion for a temporary restraining order or a preliminary injunction — that would speed up the timeline for the judge to consider what Trump is asking. Nor did Trump’s legal team submit statements — meaning statements from lawyers said to have interacted with the Justice Department before and after the investigation — to support the complaint’s factual allegations. Instead, the complaint restated allegations about the FBI’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election while dramatically suggesting that the Justice Department’s actions were motivated by a desire to prevent Trump from running for president in 2024. It also included the full text of a warning he was supposedly trying to give through his lawyers to Attorney General Merrick Garland. Schnapp said Trump’s testimony Monday read more like a political message than a legal document. “They really didn’t ask for anything. That’s crazy,” Schnapp said. “They didn’t call for anything to be done in the immediate future to slow it down, even though that’s what they claimed they were doing.” Trump’s move to file a separate case assigned to Judge Cannon, rather than filing the request with the judge who signed the warrant, also caused confusion among outside legal experts. It appears that Trump’s lawyers even ran into procedural issues with the filing of the lawsuit and with their efforts to appear in the case. The clerk posted a notice on the docket indicating the complaint had been “contractually filed” when it “should have been filed electronically,” according to local court rules. Another notice from the clerk said Trump lawyers seeking special admission to join the case because they weren’t disbarred in Florida also didn’t follow local rules. They were given another chance to get their performances right. This story has been updated with additional details.