As part of a court filing sent out this past week, The U.S. Department of Justice has officially signaled that it is in fact open to using one of the picks from former President Donald Trump as the special master who is slated to go over all of the documents taken by the FBI as part of the Mar-a-Lago raid that was carried out last month.
Cast prosecutors stated via a court filing that they would approve of Raymond J. Dearie standing up to the role because of his “substantial judicial experience,” which includes presiding “over federal criminal and civil cases, including federal cases involving national security and privilege concerns.”
Additionally, the DOJ suggested on their end that such a special master should either be former federal judge Thomas B. Griffith or former federal judge Barbara S. Jones.
“The government understands that each of the three candidates with prior judicial experience also currently employs staff who could assist in timely performing the duties assigned to the special master,” expressed the filing. “In selecting among the three candidates, the government respectfully requests that the Court consider and select the candidate best positioned to timely perform the special master’s assigned responsibilities.”
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued their own ruling this past month seemingly in favor of allowing a special master to go over all of the documents that were taken during the raid.
Former U.S. Attorney General William Barr labeled the request from Trump to set up a special master to go over the items that were taken as part of the raid “a bit of a red herring” as part of a recent interview.
“The only documents that have been taken, it seems to me, that there’s a legitimate concern about keeping away from the government and insulating the government from would be documents relating to his private lawyer communications, him as an individual and his outside lawyers,” expressed Barr. “If there’s stuff like that, fine, identify it. There doesn’t appear to be much of it. I’m not sure you need a special master to identify it.”
“But what people are missing is that all the other documents taken, even if they claim to be executive privilege, either belong to the government because they’re government records — even if they’re classified, even if they’re subject to executive privilege, they still belong to the government and go to the Archives,” he concluded. “And any other documents that were seized, like news clippings and other things that were in the boxes containing the classified information, those were seizable under the warrant because they show the conditions under which the classified information was being held. So, I think it’s a red herring … at this stage, since they have already gone through the documents, I think it’s a waste of time.”