A US federal judge on Monday granted former President Donald Trump’s request to appoint an independent special monitor to review thousands of pages of national security documents seized from his Florida residence.
District Judge Aileen Cannon authorized the appointment over objections from the Justice Department, which told her last week that it had already completed a review of top-secret documents and other court-ordered papers obtained at Mar-a-Lago. on August 8.
The Justice Department said that of the 11,000 pages seized, it found about 500 of private materials that could possibly be returned to Trump, and that – according to the judge in her ruling – include medical documents, accounting and tax information.
Cannon ordered attorneys for the parties to provide him by Friday with a list of possible candidates who could run the independent review of the documents seized at Mar-a-Lago. He also said they must negotiate the “duties and limitations” of the nominee and a time limit to complete the review.
The judge also ordered the Justice Department, “pending independent monitor review” or a new court order, to suspend the criminal investigation into why Trump sent highly secret documents to Florida when his term ended in January 2021 instead of turning them over. to the National Archives as required by law.
However, he said that even with the criminal investigation delayed, government intelligence experts could continue to review whether there was any danger to security interests by keeping the documents at Mar-a-Lago, where hundreds of people frequent the dining room. or stay as hotel guests.
In a motion filed last weekThe Justice Department said it only sought and was approved to search a basement storage room, Trump’s office and other rooms in Mar-a-Lago, after suspecting the documents were “probably concealed and removed” from the area of storage and “there were likely efforts to obstruct the government investigation.”
Trump had returned hundreds of documents between January and June.
However, Attorney General Merrick Garland authorized the search last month and U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart approved it after prosecutors said they learned from inside sources that more documents remained at Mar-a-Lago, even as a Trump attorney, Christina Bobb, had signed a statement saying that “ a diligent search” yielded that there was nothing more to be found.
The photo controversy
The Justice Department included a photo in its motion of a number of highly secret documents it had found in Trump’s office during the search and placed on a rug at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s lawyers countered that, “simply put, the notion that presidential records might contain sensitive information should never have been cause for alarm.”
Trump accused the Justice Department of launching a partisan witch hunt against him and his lawyers. Furthermore, he claimed that he had declassified documents, although he did not present any proof that he did so before January 20, 2021, when his authority to do so expired.
Cannon, who was appointed by Trump, said in her order that a special monitor needs to be appointed “in the interest of ensuring the integrity of an orderly process amid allegations of bias and leaks to the press.”
He added that Trump “faces untold potential harm if any sensitive information is improperly disclosed to the public.”
According to the judge, since Trump is a former president, “the stigma” of the confiscated materials that must be returned to him and not be retained by the government, “is a particular case.”
“A future prosecution, based to some degree on the property that should have been returned, would result in reputational damage of a decidedly different magnitude,” Cannon said.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channel Youtube and turn on notifications, or follow us on social media: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Add Comment