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Trump, Justice Department submit nominees to review Mar-a-Lago documents

A collection of documents seized by the FBI on August 8th during execution of a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago resort home of former President Donald Trump. The documents, some of which were labeled top secret, were taken from the White House when Trump left office. File Photo via Department of Justice/UPI
A collection of documents seized by the FBI on August 8th during execution of a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago resort home of former President Donald Trump. The documents, some of which were labeled top secret, were taken from the White House when Trump left office. File Photo via Department of Justice/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 9 (UPI) -- Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and the Justice Department late on Friday named their nominees to serve as special master to review documents seized from Mar-a-Lago last month.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon granted a request from Trump to appoint a special master after weeks of sparring over whether the former president should be allowed to have a third-party lawyer review more than 11,000 documents taken from his Florida residence.

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The Justice Department named Barbara S. Jones and Thomas B. Griffith as their choices for a special master, while stating that they want the special master to wrap up their review of the documents by Oct. 17, just five weeks from now.

Jones is a retired judge for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and partner in Bracewell LLP who previously served as a special master to review documents seized in search warrants in 2021 and 2018. She was appointed to her post by former President Bill Clinton.

Griffith is a retired judge who was appointed by former President George W. Bush to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and is currently a lecturer at Harvard Law School.

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He previously wrote the majority opinion in the court's decision to reject an attempt from House Democrats to subpoena Don McGahn, Trump's former White House Counsel.

Trump nominated Paul Huck Jr. and Raymond Dearie to serve as special master and proposed a 90-day time period to review the documents.

Huck is a former partner at Jones Day, the mega-firm that represented the Trump campaign in 2016. He currently runs his own law firm and is a contributor to the conservative group, the Federalist Society.

Dearie was first appointed by former President Ronald Reagan to serve as a federal judge and has held the post of chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

"The parties generally agree on the categories of documents into which the materials to be reviewed by the special master should be allocated," the joint filing reads.

Trump's attorneys proposed that he and the Justice Department split the fees and expenses for having the special master and any support staff review the documents while the Justice Department said that Trump should bear the cost since he requested the special master review.

Judge Cannon will ultimately determine the "details and mechanics" of the special master review.

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