and then there were four
Trump and DOJ nominate candidates for special master in Mar-a-Lago case
Lawyers for former President Donald Trump and the Department of Justice each put forward a pair of candidates to serve as the special master who will be entrusted with reviewing documents seized last month during the FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago, CNN and The Guardian report.
Trump and DOJ lawyers nominated the four candidates but failed to agree on who the special master should be, the proper scope of his or her work, or which side should bear the added expense in a joint filing Friday.
The two sides told Judge Aileen Cannon, who granted Trump's request for a special master earlier this week, that they would update her on their positions after the weekend.
The DOJ suggested Thomas Griffith, a retired D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals judge who co-authored a report condemning Trump's stolen election claims, and Barbara Jones, who served as a federal judge in the Southern District of New York from 2005 to 2020 and has extensive special master experience.
Trump's first nominee was Raymond Dearie, also a retired federal judge. CNN notes that Dearie served a seven-year term on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA), during which he had a hand in approving "an FBI and DOJ request to surveil Carter Page, a Trump campaign foreign policy adviser." Trump's lawyers also put forward Paul Huck Jr.. Huck formerly served as Florida's deputy attorney general and as general counsel to then-Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.