Trump’s legal team and the US Justice Department are sharply divided over the choice of candidates for the post of a special master and their role in the investigation. Over 11,000 government documents, marked ‘Top Secret’ and ‘Classified,’ were seized from the Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Lawyers fighting for Trump and officials of the Justice Dept. failed to arrive at any agreement on the identity and the role of the person who would get to serve as a ‘special master.’ Their role would be to sift through a mass of documents that the FBI managed to seize from the Palm Beach residence.
Trump’s Outrageous Demand Will Only Delay US Justice Department’s Investigation
Both sides put out different candidates. While the US Justice Department proposed the name of a couple of former federal judges, the Trump camp came up with the name of a retired Federal Dist. Court judge and a former deputy attorney general in Florida.
Clinton appointee Barbara S. Jones served in New York’s Southern District. She served an identical role in the cases that involved Trump’s former personal lawyers. Tomas B. Griffith was the other name nominated by the US Justice Department. He is a George W. Bush nominee who retired from Columbia’s Court of Appeals in 2021.
Barr has been critical of Trump for his antics since leaving office, but he has rarely been so blunt in an assessment during an interview when he called the demand for a ‘special master’ a crock of shit and said the demand was uncalled-for.
Barr’s comments echoed the voice of Democrats and even a section of Republicans who realize that Trump is treading on thin ice and is making demands that will just delay the inevitable.
The US Justice Department seeks to speed up the investigation process into Trump’s handling of secret and sensitive documents and has set an October 17 deadline for the completion of the arbiter’s work.
