The Justice Department and Trump legal team submitted their lists of possible special master candidates to review the documents seized by the FBI

Washington — The Justice Department and the legal team representing President Donald Trump have each submitted their lists of possible candidates for the role of special master to evaluate the records that were taken by the FBI in August from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

Both the prosecuting team and Trump’s legal team put forward two nominees for the job in a joint document that was submitted late on Friday.

The government suggested the appointment of two former federal judges: Barbara Jones, who formerly worked in the federal district court in Manhattan, and Thomas Griffith, who previously worked on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Both of these individuals are now retired. Circuit.

Rayond Dearie, a former Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, and Paul Huck, Jr., a former Deputy Attorney General for the State of Florida were proposed as potential candidates for the position by the legal team representing the former president.

Both parties have stated that they will provide a response to the names put forward by the other party by Monday. It is not entirely clear whether each camp has any problems to the candidates suggested by the other camp or not.

Jones, who is now a partner at a law firm in New York, has served as a special master in two other investigations that have focused on President Trump. In the first of these investigations, Jones looked for information protected by the attorney-client privilege in material seized in connection with the prosecution of the former president’s one-time lawyer, Michael Cohen. In the second investigation, Jones looked into allegations made against Rudy Giuliani.

A lecturer at Harvard Law School, Griffith was just given a position on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Circuit in 2005 by former President George W. Bush, who served at the time. Prior to that, he worked as the neutral Senate Legal Counsel, a position in which he advised the Senate on matters such as the impeachment of the sitting President at the time, Bill Clinton.

After working as the head of the Appeals Division at the United States Attorney’s Office for a number of years, Ronald Reagan offered Dearie a position on the federal bench in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York in the year 1986. Reagan made this appointment. At the moment, he has the position of senior judge in that court. In addition, Dearie was a member of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is the judicial body that decides whether or not individuals within the United States are subject to surveillance. In that capacity, he gave his approval in 2017 to the FISA warrant that was requested for former Trump associate Carter Page.

Huck is currently the sole partner of a law firm that bears his surname. He previously worked as the chief counsel for Florida Republican Governor Charlie Christ, who is now running for the same seat again on the Democratic ticket. Additionally, Huck was the second in charge at the office of the state Attorney General. His wife, federal Judge Barbara Lagoa, was considered a favorite of the previous president to serve on the Supreme Court and was appointed by Trump to serve on the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Trump is the current president of the United States.

On Monday, Judge Aileen Cannon issued a ruling in which she decided that she would select a special master, which is an impartial third party, to carry out the review. She also directed the two parties to compile a list of suitable candidates who would be acceptable to both of them.

In addition, Cannon gave the order to the federal investigators who are looking into whether or not Trump mishandled secret documents to refrain from using the confiscated documents in their criminal investigation until a special master has had a chance to evaluate them.

On Thursday, the Justice Department filed notice of its intention to appeal Cannon’s ruling on the special master. The department also asked Cannon to lift part of the ruling so that investigators could continue reviewing the 103 most sensitive documents seized from Mar-a-Lago that bear classified markings. The filings were made as part of the department’s Thursday activity.

The Justice Department has requested that the investigation into the materials be resumed, and Trump and his attorneys have until Monday morning to reply to the request.

Cannon reached his decision earlier this week, siding with Trump’s legal team and concluding that an independent investigation was essential. She gave a special master the responsibility of analyzing “potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege.” The ruling did allow the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to continue its investigation into the potential threats to national security posed by the seized records, despite the fact that criminal investigators were prevented from accessing them.

But because of the “uncertainty” produced by Cannon’s decision from Monday, the intelligence community has opted to stop its review of the papers for the time being. In the filing that was submitted by the Justice Department on Thursday, it was stated that the 103 documents containing classified markings had previously been segregated from the remaining thousands of seized data.

In the notice of appeal that it filed, the Department of Justice argued that the country’s security would be severely compromised if the investigation were to be halted, and that an intelligence review of the records could not be carried out in the absence of the participation of criminal investigators. According to the writings of the prosecutors, the delay may do “irreparable harm” to both the investigation and the general public.

In the lawsuit that Trump has filed, the president claims that the search warrant issued by the Justice Department on August 8 that led to the search of Mar-a-Lago was “overbroad” and that investigators obtained material that was “presumptively protected.” According to Cannon’s statement from Monday, she believed that this issue required additional investigation.

After Trump leaves office in 2021, documents with classified markings will be transferred from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence. According to the allegations being investigated by investigators, these documents were improperly handled during the transfer from the White House to Mar-a-Lago. The National Archives and the FBI were able to collect troves of records from the Florida resort in three distinct incidents that took place earlier this year and culminated in the search that took place on August 8. They are also investigating if Trump or members of his team attempted to impede the investigation by not responding appropriately to a subpoena issued by a grand jury.

As part of the ruling that Cannon issued on Monday, she also ordered prosecutors and Trump’s team to lay out areas of agreement and disagreement over the proposed role of the special master as well as the process by which the review should be conducted in order to eliminate any potential conflicts before the review even begins.

On several fronts, including the deadline for the completion of the review, the special master’s ability to view documents with classified markings, their mandate regarding executive privilege, and the financial terms for the arrangement, the Justice Department and Trump’s attorneys were at odds with one another.

The former president proposed that the special master should have a period of ninety days to do the task, access to all of the materials that were seized (including those that included secret information), and the authority to judge claims of executive privilege. Additionally, Trump’s legal team suggested that the costs of the special master’s study be divided between the disputing parties. These costs might include payments for support workers.

However, the prosecutors have suggested that the process should be completed by October 17 and have argued that the special master should not have access to documents that have been marked as classified. Additionally, the prosecutors have argued that questions regarding executive privilege should be referred to the National Archives. Additionally, the Department of Justice suggested in its letter that President Trump “carry the additional expense of the Special Master’s work.”

In addition, the parties have divergent opinions regarding several workflow-related particulars, which the judge is expected to settle.

The prosecutors wrote that they intend to provide copies of all unclassified materials to Trump’s attorneys and that they intend to return to the former president any personal items that were seized during the search on August 8 “that were not commingled with records bearing classification markings,” although they note that “such property was within the scope of what the search warrant authorized.” In addition, the prosecutors wrote that they intend to return to the former president any personal items that were seized during the search “that were not commingled