Court to appoint special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents

(A7) A Florida judge on Saturday filed an order Saturday noting that the court plans to appoint a special master to oversee judicial interactions with plaintiff former US President Donald Trump.

“The Court hereby provides notice of its preliminary intent to appoint a special master in this case,” wrote District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated by Trump during his time as president, according to a report in The Hill.

The order fulfills requests filed this week by Trump for the court to appoint a special master to review Mar-a-Lago documents before the FBI is able to review them.

Trump filed a lawsuit on Monday to block the FBI from reviewing the documents that it seized in its raid of his home earlier this month.

Cannon declared that a hearing on the motion to appoint a special master will take place on Thursday, after the defense lawyers file their response.

She also required that Trump respond to the response of the defense before the hearing next week.

On Friday, the Department of Justice released a heavily redacted affidavit that was used to justify the August 8 search of Mar-a-Lago.

While the document contains little information about the search itself, it does reveal that an initial collection of boxes from Mar-a-Lago in January yielded 15 boxes containing 184 documents that were classified, secret or top secret.

A New York Times report on Monday indicated that the US government recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings from Mar-a-Lago.

According to the report, the classified documents included material from the CIA, the National Security Agency and the FBI.