Justice Department and Donald Trump's legal team propose names for independent arbiter in Mar-a-Lago probe

Washington: The Justice Department and Donald Trump’s legal team have proposed candidates to serve as an independent arbiter in the investigation into top-secret information found in an FBI search of the former president’s Florida home.

But the two sides disagree on the scope of duties to be performed by the so-called special master.

The Justice Department proposed two retired judges for the role. Trump’s team proposed a retired judge and a lawyer.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon had given both sides until Friday to submit potential candidates for the role of a “special master,” as well as proposals for the scope of the person’s duties and the schedule for his or her work.

The back-and-forth over the special master is playing out amid an FBI investigation into the retention of several hundred classified documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago within the past year. Though the legal wrangling is unlikely to have major long-term effects on the criminal investigation or knock it significantly off course, it will almost certainly delay it and has already caused the intelligence community to temporarily pause a national risk assessment it was doing.

Over the strenuous objections of the Justice Department, Cannon on Monday granted the Trump team’s request for the special master and directed the department to temporarily halt its review of records for investigative purposes.

She said the person would be responsible for sifting through the records recovered during the 8 August, 2022, search of Mar-a-Lago and filter out from the criminal investigation any documents potentially covered by claims of attorney-client or executive privilege.

Roughly 11,000 documents — including more than 100 with classified markings, some at the top-secret level — were recovered during the search. That’s on top of classified documents contained in 15 boxes retrieved in January by the National Archives and Records Administration, and additional sensitive government records the department took back during a June visit to Mar-a-Lago.

The Justice Department had objected to the Trump team’s request for a special master, saying it had already completed its own review in which identified a limited subset of records that possibly involve attorney-client privilege. It has maintained that executive privilege does not apply in this investigation because Trump, no longer president, had no right to claim the documents as his.

The department on Thursday filed a notice of appeal indicating that it would contest the judge’s order to the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Officials asked the judge to lift her hold on their investigative work pending their appeal, as well as her requirement that the department share with a special master the classified records that were recovered.

It is not clear whether Trump or anyone else will be charged.

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