Florida federal judge Aileen Cannon, nominated for the position by Donald Trump in 2020, granted this Monday the former president's request that an independent expert be appointed to supervise the official and largely secret documents that he took to his Florida mansion, Mar-a-Lago. The action of that expert will delay the investigation, which was undoubtedly one of the objectives of the former president when presenting his request.
The request of the expert, here called "special master", was justified by Trump's desire that the investigators of the FBI and the United States Attorney General's Office exclude his private papers and those protected by his privileges from the case, including that of the attorney-client relationship.
Thus, the expert in question will have to review all of Trump's assets seized by the FBI, study the invocations of privilege that the former president made in this regard, and issue conclusions and recommendations on the claims of return of papers by the leader. republican.
Trump's legal team requested that the expert review from top to bottom the official inventory of what was seized by the FBI at Trump's residence. According to the Prosecutor's Office, the list includes 102 documents with sensitive content, of which 18 are marked as "top secret", 53 as "secret" and 31 as "confidential".
The agents also found in the house, specifically in a Trump office, 90 empty folders with marks of "classified" material (48) or indications to "Return to Secretary of Staff / Military Assistant" (42). The disappearance of the documents that were kept in those folders is obviously a cause for concern.
The Department of Justice and the Attorney General's Office opposed the appointment of the expert, considering it "unnecessary" and delaying the investigation process.
According to the resolution against Judge Aileen Cannon, the FBI and the Department of Justice will not be able to continue reviewing the seized material or use it in the framework of the investigation until the expert, once chosen and appointed to the case, completes his analysis... Or until a new court order.
However, as indicated in the judge's resolution, the expert analysis will not stop the evaluation by the National Intelligence Department of the possible risks to the country's security caused by the interruption of due government custody of the classified documents that Trump took from the White House. The papers were found scattered between a storage room and Trump's office at his residence.
The Prosecutor's Office reported last week that part of the papers concerned the secret activity, and therefore highly sensitive, of spies and other "human intelligence sources" of the United States.
