Trump’s legal team asks for ‘special master’ to go through Mar-a-Lago evidence and determine if some should be returned

By Katelyn Polantz, Kaitlan Collins and Tierney Sneed, CNN

(CNN) - Former President Donald Trump's legal team has asked a federal judge to appoint a "special master" to ensure the Justice Department returns any of his private documents seized during the search of Mar-a-Lago two weeks ago.

Trump is asking for a special master -- a third-party attorney -- to oversee the review of evidence gathered from the beach club in the criminal probe, and for the judge to pause federal investigators' work related to the evidence until the review is done, according to a new court filing.

The new lawsuit marks the first legal filing by Trump's team after FBI agents carried out their search on August 8 and underscores how his legal team has struggled to coalesce around a singular strategy. It has been assigned to Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020.

In the suit, Trump argues his constitutional rights were violated and that there may have been privileged materials seized.

Though the legal maneuver could slow down the Justice Department's ongoing criminal investigation, Trump's request to the federal court in South Florida could face an uphill legal battle after his team missed multiple opportunities to challenge the search.

The ex-President's lawyers declined to take a position in court in the immediate aftermath of the search warrant execution. They also did not weigh in on whether the search warrant affidavit should be made public before or during a court hearing last week in West Palm Beach, Florida, even though one of his attorneys was present.

Trump, in the new filing, also asks for a more detailed receipt of what was removed from Mar-a-Lago. That request, if granted, would add to the two receipts the FBI already provided to Trump's team describing 33 items seized, and which his attorney signed off on at the end of the search.

The Justice Department removed 11 sets of classified documents from Trump's home, according to documents unsealed by a judge last week. The inventory shows that some of the materials recovered were marked as "top secret/SCI," which is one of the highest levels of classification.

Trump's team gives his version of the Mar-a-Lago search

In the filing, Trump's attorneys put forward the former President's narrative for how the search went down, the events leading up to it and the fallout from it.

The lawsuit also recounted a message for Attorney General Merrick Garland that Trump's lawyers gave to a top Justice Department official over the phone on August 11, a few days after the search.

"President Trump wants the Attorney General to know that he has been hearing from People all over the country about the raid," Trump's message said, according to the lawsuit. "If there was one word to describe their mood, it is 'angry.' The heat is building up. The pressure is building up. Whatever I can do to take the heat down, to bring the pressure down, just let us know."

The filing states that at 9:10 a.m. ET on the day of the search, that same top Justice Department official -- Jay Bratt, the head of the counterintelligence section in the Department of Justice's national security division -- telephoned Trump's lawyers to tell them a search warrant was being executed at Mar-a-Lago.

"Heated discussion ensued as to why the Government did not make a voluntary request to further explore the premises, given the expansive assistance that President Trump had provided to that point," the lawsuit said.

In Trump's telling, the search took nine hours and involved two dozen FBI agents.

The lawsuit recounted a request from Bratt that Mar-a-Lago's surveillance cameras be turned off -- a request that the filing said was declined. Bratt also asked for the names of the Trump attorneys who may have been arriving at the search. The new lawsuit claims that Bratt rebuffed a request from Trump's team that they be provided the affidavit.

"Among other actions taken after being notified of this unprecedented event, counsel for President Trump contacted three attorneys in the general area who agreed to go to Mar-a-Lago," the lawsuit said. "Once they arrived, they requested the ability to enter the mansion in order to observe what the FBl agents were doing, which the Government declined to permit."

This is a breaking story and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.