Willie R. Tubbs, FISM News
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Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over the legal struggle between the Department of Justice and former President Donald J. Trump, will soon decide among four potential special masters as the fight over how to handle documents seized from Mar-A-Lago continues.
The goal of the process is to find a neutral third-party attorney to independently review at least some of the documents the FBI seized from Trump’s Florida home, but the two sides are at odds over just which documents that will be.
Trump wants the special master to see everything while the DOJ argues classified materials should not be seen nor should the special master consider any claims about executive privilege, the latter concept being among the defenses for the former president.
One of the purposes of a special master is to find a person unconnected to an investigation who can sift through documents and decide which are fit for viewing by prosecutors and which are protected by privilege, typically attorney-client privilege.
The Justice Department had previously asked Cannon to reconsider allowing the appointment of a special master, arguing that it needed to view all seized items in the interest of national security.
Late last week, the DOJ submitted the names of Thomas Griffith and Barbara Jones, while Trump nominated Paul Huck Jr. and Raymond Dearie.
Of the four, Jones certainly has the most experience serving as a special master in matters involving Trump. Formerly a Bill Clinton-appointed judge, Jones was the special master who oversaw documents seized by the FBI in raids of former Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen.
Griffith, a retired judge and former George W. Bush appointee, endorsed Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court and has written a report rejecting Trump’s claims about the 2020 presidential election.
Trump’s first nominee seems almost counterintuitive.
Dearie, a former judge on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court, can certainly not be accused of being a subordinate or naturally sympathetic to Trump. He previously approved an FBI and DOJ request to surveil Carter Page, then a Trump adviser, as a means of investigating alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
The FISA court has also been a target of Trump’s criticism. He previously accused the court of serving the aims of a deep-state effort to discredit the 2016 results. Trump has recently come to speak more positively of the FISA court, even accusing the FBI of having misled the court in its dealings.
“They leak, lie, plant fake evidence, allow the spying on my campaign, deceive the FISA Court, RAID and Break-Into my home, lose documents, and then they ask me, as the 45th President of the United States, to trust them,” Trump posted on Truth Social Thursday. “Look at the I.G. Reports on [former FBI director James] Comey, [former deputy director Andrew] McCabe, and others. Things are safer in the middle of Central Park!”
Huck, on paper, would appear more likely to be sympathetic to Trump. He served as deputy attorney general for Florida and as general counsel to former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, who at the time was a Republican but who has since swapped parties to seek another term.
Barbara Lagoa, Huck’s wife, was also among the people Trump considered as a replacement for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.
Cannon has promised to rule “expeditiously” but it remains unclear just how soon a decision will arrive.