Trump's attorneys against denoting declassified docs to special master

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
20 Sep 2022 14:47

The attorneys have issued a 4-page letter to the special master explaining their position.

A receipt of the property seized by the FBI from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (Reuters)

Donald Trump's attorney in a filing on Monday night said they do not want to reveal to the court-appointed special master which documents seized at Mar-A-Lago were declassified or not.

Trump's attorneys, who wrote a 4-page letter to the special master, pushed back against Senior US district judge Raymond Dearie's proposal that they turn in “specific information regarding declassification” to him for review.

Dearie issued an order on Friday which calls both parties to convene in the federal courthouse in New York for a preliminary conference.

In response, the attorneys said that until or unless they rule fighting the search warrant by the FBI, or if they decide to offer it as a defense after any potential incident for indictment, they will not be disclosing details regarding the declassification nature of the documents. Such details, moreover, would also be shared with the Justice Department.

“It was all declassified," Trump wrote on Truth Social last month. Legal experts, however, said that it would be irrelevant if the documents are declassified or not, depending on the charges filed.

Lawyers at the Justice Department in their letter proposed that Dearie's review of the material on Monday begin first by scanning the seized documents, and having Trump's attorneys review 500 pages a day, marking each document as privileged or not. Based on this, prosecutors can agree or disagree and lodge them to the special master who, interestingly, was appointed by Trump himself.

A federal judge made November 30 a deadline for Dearie to conclude his review and classifications.