The review by a court-appointed third party known as a special master of documents seized from Trump’s southern Florida resort Mar-a-Lago in August is still not going according to what would no doubt be the former president’s own ambitions, although he pushed for it.
During a status call this Tuesday, U.S. Judge Raymond Dearie, who is serving as the special master, criticized the status of work by lawyers in the case, including the government’s side. According to a Twitter post from Sarah Lynch with Reuters, the former president’s team must provide the Department of Justice with an accounting of privilege claims by the first days of November, and within under two weeks after that point, a joint submission to the special master of unsettled claims is due. Also according to Lynch, Dearie expressed concerns during the call about the possibility of receiving an overwhelming number of privilege claims once he finally gets the unsettled details. “Dearie says he is in an odd situation because he has very little information in terms of individual documents for which a privilege has been claimed,” Lynch added. A data processing firm that was to be retained in the documents dispute for processing seized materials for further handling was also going to make docs available in some form to Dearie, according to details available earlier.
“Saying it so doesn’t make it so,” Dearie added Tuesday, discussing the emerging privilege claims. The judge also sought specific citations from the Justice Department for disputes of the Trump side’s privilege contentions. A government lawyer pinned blame on Trump. “He notes they are “ready” and usually certain info is common to be included in a privilege log, and he is at a loss for why Trump’s team has not done so,” Lynch reported. There is apparently shared access to early-stage privilege claims, with disagreements for Dearie to settle left for later. “It’s a little perplexing as I go through the log,” Dearie added during the call, expressing concerns about missing details and potential contradictions, like claims of personal and executive privilege over the same doc. “Where’s the beef?” Dearie asked at another juncture. Jim Trusty, a Trump lawyer with experience in federal prosecution, pushed for a ten-day extension and defended his team’s conduct, saying flagging potentially privileged items was a first step. There are apparently over 21,000 individual docs for review.
“I see a doc for which claim there’s a personal doc, and also a claim that executive privilege covers it,” Dearie also specifically said amid the day’s discussion, per one accounting from Tuesday. “Unless I’m wrong, there’s a certain incongruity there. Perhaps plaintiff’s counsel will address that in submission.” Or, they’ll just keep stalling. There is currently an ongoing legal dispute in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in which the Justice Department is trying to completely shut down the special master’s review, arguing the unclassified documents still subject to the review are also critical for establishing context clues in the broader, ongoing investigation covering recovered documents marked classified.
