“This investigation of the 45th President of the United States is both unprecedented and misguided,” Trump’s lawyers, James Trusty and Christopher Keyes, wrote in their response. “In what is at its core a document storage controversy that has spiraled out of control, the government is unfairly seeking to criminalize the 45th President’s possession of his own presidential and personal records.” In their 40-page filing, Trump’s lawyers told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that the FBI’s seizure of documents from Trump’s South Florida home in Mar-a-Lago presents “exceptional circumstances that warrant review by a neutral third party. ” and said the Justice Department has not proven that the documents at the center of its appeals court request are classified. “Ultimately, any brief delay in the criminal investigation will not irreparably harm the government,” Trusty and Kise wrote. “The order does not preclude the government from conducting a criminal investigation, it merely delays the investigation for a short period of time while a neutral third party reviews the documents in question.” A detailed inventory of property by the FBI released this month shows that federal agents seized 33 items, boxes or containers from a warehouse and desks in Trump’s office that contained 103 documents marked “confidential,” “confidential” or “top secret” FBI investigation on August 8 at the South Florida property. Last Friday, the Justice Department turned to the 11th Circuit after US District Judge Aileen Cannon denied its request to restore access to the batch of classified files that were among the seized material. Cannon barred the Justice Department from using the documents in its ongoing criminal investigation into Trump’s handling of sensitive government records, pending a review by a third arbitrator known as a special master. In their filing with the 11th Circuit asking the court to suspend Cannon’s order keeping the subset of sensitive records off limits to investigators, federal prosecutors argued that the ruling “precludes” the criminal investigation and “irreparably harms the government by imposing critical steps of an ongoing criminal investigation and unnecessarily forced disclosure of highly sensitive records,” including Trump’s lawyers. By blocking the review and use of the records for investigative purposes, the ruling “impedes the administration’s efforts to protect the nation’s security,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in their 29-page filing. In addition to upholding her order preventing federal investigators from using the sensitive documents, Cannon, a Trump appointee to the federal bench, also named Judge Raymond Deary to serve as a special master. Dearie has been tasked with reviewing the approximately 11,000 documents recovered by the FBI from a storage facility and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office for personal items and records, as well as material that may be subject to attorney-client privilege or stem. Dearie, a longtime federal district court judge in Brooklyn, met with Justice Department lawyers and Trump’s legal team on Tuesday afternoon. He asked the parties to submit their proposed agenda items in advance. In a letter Monday, federal prosecutors suggested that congress focus on the “exact mechanics” of how the documents will be reviewed, aspects of the order appointing Diery as special master and future progress reviews. In a separate letter to Dearie, Trump’s lawyers pushed back Dearie’s proposed Oct. 7 deadline for the two sides to finish reviewing and marking documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. They also objected to a request by Dearie that Trump disclose information about any potential declassification of sensitive material taken from his South Florida residence, arguing that doing so would force Trump to “fully and specifically disclose a defense to the substance of any subsequent indictment without such a requirement is apparent in the district court’s decision.”
