Yahoo News by Sarah N. Lynch 9/9/2022
U.S. Justice Dept, Trump team deeply divided over special master appointment
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department and Donald Trump's attorneys said on Friday they are deeply divided over whether classified records seized by the FBI from the former president's Florida estate should be reviewed by a special master, and they each put forth a separate list of candidates for the job.
In a joint filing on Friday evening, the U.S. Justice Department told U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that Trump's legal team is insisting that the special master should be allowed to review "all seized materials, including documents with classification markings."
Trump's lawyers also want the special master, an independent third-party, to review the records for possible executive privilege claims - a mandate the department opposes.
Both sides also each proposed two different sets of possible candidates for the job, though they said they intend to inform the court about their views on each others' candidate list by Monday.
A special master is an independent third-party sometimes appointed by a federal court to weed through sensitive records that could be privileged and segregate them so they are not viewed by prosecutors and do not taint a criminal investigation.
The Justice Department said it is proposing two candidates for special master: Retired judge Barbara Jones, who previously served as a special master in cases involving Trump's former lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen, or retired judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of Republican President George W. Bush who served on the D.C. appeals court from 2005-2020.
Trump's team proposed Raymond Dearie, a judge on senior status in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and former U.S. Attorney who served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and Paul Huck, Florida's former Deputy Attorney General and a former partner with Jones Day, a law firm that previously represented Trump's campaign.
More:
https://news.yahoo.com/u-justice-department-trump-team-100706418.html
