Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty
The joint filing by the Department of Justice and Donald Trump’s legal team ordered by Trump-appointed Judge Aileen Cannon reveals an expanding chasm between the two sides that appears to make further legal battles inevitable. After Cannon required both sides to set forth substantive points upon which they can agree or disagree regarding Cannon’s decision to utilize a special master to review documents seized in the Mar-A-Lago search warrant, the DOJ and Trump’s lawyers submitted a six-page filing. It was short because the parties disagree on everything, from proposed candidates to be the special master, to the scope of that person’s authority, to who should even pay for the special master.
The DOJ’s proposed candidates are two retired judges: Barbara Jones, formerly a federal district court judge in the Southern District of New York who recently served a special master in the review of documents seized in search warrants executed upon the offices of Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Michael Cohen; and Thomas Griffith, formerly a federal court of appeals judge in Washington, D.C.
Trump’s lawyers proposed: Raymond Dearie, formerly the chief judge of the federal district court in the Eastern District of New York, with experience on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA court); and Paul Huck who had worked with one Trump’s current lawyers for then-Republican Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Huck is married to Judge Barbara Lagoa, a federal court of appeals judge on the 11th Circuit—the same court of appeals that will hear any appeal in this case.