Donald Trump's lawyers claim there’s no evidence that the documents seized by the FBI were shared with anyone, concluding that some of the records belong to the former president and not the DOJ.
with its criminal investigation into the illegal retention of national defense information at Mar-a-Lago and into the potential obstruction of that probe.
The investigation hit a roadblock last week when U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted the Trump team's request for the appointment of an independent arbiter, also known as a special master, to review the seized records and prohibited for now the department from examining the documents for investigative purposes.
The Justice Department has asked the judge to lift that hold and said it would appeal her ruling to a federal appeals court.The department said its investigation risked being harmed beyond repair if that order was not lifted, noting that confusion about its scope and meaning had already led the intelligence community to pause a separate risk assessment it was doing.
But Trump's lawyers said in their own motion Monday that the order was a "sensible preliminary step towards restoring order from chaos." They asked Cannon to leave it in place."This investigation of the 45th President of the United States is both unprecedented and misguided," they wrote.
In the meantime, both sides on Friday night each proposed different names of candidates who could serve in the role of a special master, though they disagreed on the exact scope of duties the person should have.