An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 15, 2022.
Marco Bello | Reuters
A federal judge in Florida told the Justice Department on Saturday to provide her with more specific information about the classified records removed from former President Donald Trump's Florida estate and said it was her "preliminary intent" to appoint a special master in the case.
The two-page order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signals that she's inclined to grant a request from Trump's lawyers, who this week asked for the appointment of an independent special master to review the records taken from Mar-a-Lago and identify any that may be protected by executive privilege.
The judge scheduled a Thursday hearing to discuss the matter further. A special master is often a former judge.
Cannon also directed the Justice Department to file under seal with her more detailed descriptions of the material taken from Trump's property. The former president's lawyers have complained that investigators did not disclose enough information to them about what specific documents were removed when agents executed a search warrant on Aug. 8 to look for classified documents.
The special master appointment, if it happens, is unlikely to significantly affect the direction of the Justice Department investigation, though it's possible an outside review of the documents could slow the probe down.
In doing so, the court put the parties on notice that she had a "preliminary intent" to appoint the special master, a third-party attorney who would filter out privileged material seized in the search.
Ahead of the hearing, the government faces a Tuesday deadline to respond to Trump's request in writing, according to the scheduling order from the court.
US District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, is asking the Department of Justice to file a public response, and additionally file under seal records going into greater detail about what was seized from the search as well as a notice laying out the status of the review of the seized materials, including the process of filtering out privileged information.
Trump's reply to DOJ's response is due Wednesday.
The hearing will be at 1 p.m. ET Thursday at the courthouse in West Palm Beach.
Cannon said at the end of the order that it should not be construed as her final decision on the matter.
On Friday, Trump responded to Cannon's request that he elaborate on his request for the special master by pointing to some additional legal discussion of case law that he said supported his request.
Cannon had identified several shortcomings in his Monday filing requesting more oversight.
Trump's Friday submission came hours after the Justice Department unsealed a redacted version of the affidavit it used to obtain the warrant, which laid out new details about the FBI's investigation and the highly sensitive nature of classified material that had been previously retrieved from the Palm Beach, Florida, resort.
Trump claimed that the newly released redacted affidavit the FBI submitted in court to obtain the warrant for the search raised "more questions than answers."
"The Redacted Affidavit underscores why this Motion should be granted, as it provides almost no information that would allow Movant to understand why the raid took place, or what was taken from his home," Trump's wrote on the filing.
This story has been updated with additional information.
The Department of Justice released a version of the document it used to convince a judge to issue a warrant to seize documents from former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence. The affidavit, which a judge ordered the Justice Department to release, lays out why the FBI felt there was probable cause that crimes had been committed.
Despite redactions, the affidavit includes many new details and clues about why the FBI and the National Archives worried about "a lot of classified records" mixed in with other things at Trump's house, which is also a private club and resort.
The first redaction in the document, on the first page, is the name of the FBI agent who wrote and signed this 32-page affidavit.
We also definitively see the FBI is conducting a criminal investigation, although it does not specifically name former President Donald Trump as the target, and that the National Archives referred the potentially illegal activity after retrieving 15 boxes of documents, which intermingled classified documents with other things from Trump in January.
The affidavit is redacted to shield the identities of witnesses, details about a federal grand jury, and to hide specifics about the ongoing investigation. Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ruled the redactions were "narrowly tailored to serve the Government’s legitimate interest in the integrity of the ongoing investigation."
The FBI was initially investigating the 15 boxes already turned over by Trump. They wanted to know how those boxes got to Mar-a-Lago, whether classified documents were stored improperly and whether people who should not have seen classified information saw these documents.
The FBI agent who signed the affidavit ****cites experience and training with counterintelligence and espionage investigations and the use and storage of sensitive information.
What’s not clear is what led the FBI to believe there were additional documents at Mar-a-Lago. CNN has reported that at some point the DOJ began to suspect the Trump team was not being truthful and a witness came forward.
The agent says this affidavit is not exhaustive of the facts known by the FBI. It simply establishes probable cause for the search. It also, conversely, does not allege a crime against Trump or anyone else. This is common boilerplate language often found in FBI affidavits.
Read 18 U.S. Code § 793 here. It concerns “gathering, transmitting or losing defense information.”
The system of classifying information as sensitive or classified is not set out in law. Rather, the rules are spelled out in a presidential executive order. The most recent update came during the Obama administration, with Executive Order 13526. Read it.
This page outlines some of the different classifications of information. Even though we get very little information about the specific nature of classified documents Trump had, we can infer from the inclusion of these definitions that the documents at Mar-a-Lago ranged from Top Secret -- requiring special storage -- to even more restrictive sub-classifications that required special access.
CNN’s Katie Bo Lillis laid out the various classifications here.
HUMINT involves human intelligence, and disclosing identities could put sources who provide information to the US at risk in foreign countries.
NOFORN is an important designation because it signifies information that is not supposed to be given to foreign governments or individuals without an OK from the agency that developed or obtained the intelligence.
Here we learn the sections of federal law and regulations that may have been violated.
The Code of Federal Regulations — or CFR — is published annually by federal agencies. 32 C.F.R Parts 2001 and 2003 are federal regulations from the National Archives related to the handling of classified national security information.
But the affidavit also cites Title 18 of the US Code — that’s federal law. 18 US § 1519 has to do with the “destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy.” Read it.
18 US Code § 2071 has to do with the “concealment, removal, or mutilation generally” of federal documents or property. Read it.
The PRA is the Presidential Records Act, passed by Congress in the aftermath of Richard Nixon’s failed attempt to take presidential documents with him out of the White House after Watergate. For an explanation of why the American public, and not the former president, own Trump’s presidential documents, click here.
A good portion of what we have learned about this case, including the first news of the search itself, has come either from Trump’s own statements or disclosures by his allies.
We’re getting heavily into redactions here.
Here’s that CBS affiliate report. Remember, this is two days before President Joe Biden took office. The images of moving trucks at Mar-a-Lago were captured by news helicopters keeping watch on Trump’s soon-to-be permanent address.
Points 24-37 in the affidavit establish probable cause. Starting on this page we shift to “Provision of the Fifteen Boxes to NARA.”
An important date here. By early May 2021, a few months after Trump left office, the Archives had already established that it was missing documents covered under the Presidential Records Act and was told 12 boxes had been “found” and were ready for pick up at Mar-a-Lago. See a full timeline of what we know.
After the affidavit was released, Trump responded on Truth Social, calling it "a total public relations subterfuge by the FBI & DOJ.”
This is important. The FBI identified 184 classified documents in the 15 boxes given by Trump to the Archives. These included 92 documents classified SECRET and 25 documents classified TOP SECRET.
The documents have additional markings, such as NOFORN, and also handwritten notes by Trump.
“Based on my training and experience, I know that documents classified at these levels typically contain” national defense information, the affidavit says.
We have entered a new portion of the affidavit, which outlines that there was classified information in the 15 boxes of presidential records Trump turned over to the Archives in January 2022.
The Justice Department left unredacted Trump’s claim, through his lawyers, that he could issue some sort of blanket declassification order. It also describes a claim from Kash Patel, a former Trump national security aide who was named as one of Trump’s designees to the National Archives in June.
CNN’s Jeremy Herb noted: The investigator who wrote the affidavit cited a May article from right-wing website Breitbart, in which Patel claimed reports that the National Archives found classified material at Mar-a-Lago were “misleading” because Trump had declassified the materials.
The rest of the section in the affidavit, however, is classified, so it’s not clear why federal investigators cited Patel’s comments.
Since the FBI’s search, Trump has pointed to a January 19, 2021, memo in which he declassified documents related to the FBI’s Russia investigation. There’s no evidence, however, that those materials were what the FBI was looking for when it searched Mar-a-Lago earlier this month.
More important clues.
A DOJ lawyer says the documents in the 15 boxes were removed from a secure facility at the White House on January 20, 2021, the day Trump left office.
The lawyer specifically told Trump’s lawyers the documents were not handled appropriately and asks Trump’s attorney to secure and preserve the room at Mar-a-Lago where the 15 boxes had been stored.
If nothing else, we know Trump’s lawyers saw DOJ’s request.
The DOJ has redacted its arguments laying out probable cause for the August search at Mar-a-Lago. CNN’s Marshall Cohen, Tierney Sneed and Jeremy Herb reported that in a legal brief also made public Friday, prosecutors wrote that these details had to be redacted because they would provide a "road map" to the investigation and that revealing "this information could thus adversely impact the government's pursuit of relevant evidence." Read more here.
Here are some new details. The FBI was looking at more than a storage room and Trump’s “45 Office.” They also focused on his “residential suite” and a room identified as Pine Hall. Here’s a picture of Pine Hall from the Library of Congress. It’s described as “antechamber to the owner’s suite.”
The FBI took pains to make clear that Mar-a-Lago club members would not be disturbed by the search.
The conclusion asks for a search warrant, which was granted and then kept under seal. Read key lines from that document here.
Two teams of agents were sent to Mar-a-Lago. The Case Team was the main group of agents on the case and they were planning to search the storage room. A second team, the Privilege Review Team, searched Trump’s office and sought to separate any documents with information that could be considered “attorney-client privileged” and keep those away from the Case Team.
Earlier this week, Trump’s legal team asked for a “special master” to review the materials that were retrieved under the search warrant. Their request is still pending.
The affidavit was submitted on August 5, a Friday. The search was conducted the next Monday, August 8.
This May letter from Trump’s attorney complained there had been public reporting about the DOJ investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents. It argued that he voluntarily handed over documents, which may be an oversimplification.
Trump’s lawyer argued the president has sweeping “unfettered” authority to declassify documents — and that neither presidents nor former presidents can be prosecuted with regard to classified documents. That’s the heart of Trump’s defense so far.
Trump’s lawyer demanded that his letter arguing Trump had “unfettered” ability to de-classify documents be presented to any judge considering the matter. On that request, the FBI complied.
Here’s a description of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s sprawling 58-bedroom Florida estate. The FBI promised that the search, according to the affidavit, would not extend beyond areas used by Trump.
The first thing the FBI wanted to do was seize any classified documents and the boxes or containers that held them. The last was any evidence of “knowing alteration, destruction, or concealment” of records.
A federal judge in Texas on Thursday struck down a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying handguns, ruling that the age limit violated the Second Amendment.
U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman said the Constitution didn’t put an age restriction on the right to bear arms, meaning adults 18 to 20 shouldn’t be prevented from carrying handguns outside the home.
The 23-page opinion leaned heavily on originalism, the conservative legal theory that judges should interpret the Constitution based on the way it was understood when it was written.
“The issue is whether prohibiting law-abiding 18-to-20-year-olds from carrying a handgun in public for self-defense is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” Pittman wrote. “Based on the Second Amendment’s text, as informed by Founding-Era history and tradition, the Court concludes that the Second Amendment protects against this prohibition."
The decision won’t take effect immediately. The judge, an appointee of former president Donald Trump, issued a 30-day stay pending appeal, saying there’s a possibility that a higher court would rule differently.
But if the ruling stands, it would further loosen firearm restrictions in Texas, where lawmakers have expanded gun access in recent years, even as the state has grappled with a spate of deadly mass shootings. It would also mark a setback for gun-reform advocates, who have renewed calls for firearm restrictions in the wake of the massacre in Uvalde, Tex., where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school in May.
Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control group Moms Demand Action, called the decision “another example of a radical court operating wildly out of step with the American people and the Constitution.”
“After hearing Uvalde survivors demanding common-sense gun safety measures — including raising the age to buy an assault weapon — a Trump-appointed judge in Texas just issued a dangerous ruling that would allow teenagers to carry handguns in public,” she said in an emailed statement.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by the Firearm Policy Coalition, a gun-rights group, and two under-21 plaintiffs who said Texas unconstitutionally prevented them from carrying handguns in public for self-defense.
State law generally bars 18- to 20-year-olds from carrying those weapons outside the home, with narrow exceptions for military personnel, veterans and people under protective orders.
The plaintiffs argued that the law ran afoul of Supreme Court decisions protecting Second Amendment rights. They acknowledged that their challenge would clash with a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upholding a ban on adults 18 to 20 obtaining concealed carry permits, but they said they believed that case was “wrongly decided.”
The Firearms Policy Coalition cheered the ruling from Pittman.
“This decision is a significant victory for the rights of young adults in Texas and demonstrates for the rest of the nation that similar bans cannot withstand constitutional challenges grounded in history,” Cody J. Wisniewski, a senior attorney with the group, said in a statement.
He said the state had failed to point to a “Founding Era” law supporting the restriction on 18- to 20-year-olds. “Not only did no such law exist, but those individuals are an important reason why we have a Bill of Rights in the first place,” Wisniewski said.
The lawsuit named as defendants Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, and several county officials tasked with enforcing the handgun ban. In court papers, the state contended that the Fifth Circuit’s decision should prevent their suit from moving forward. Public safety officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Friday morning.
Texas has experienced several high-profile mass shootings in the past half-decade, including massacres in Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Uvalde and other communities that have left dozens of people dead. Despite public pressure to curb gun violence and rein in firearms, lawmakers have steadily weakened gun controls in the state. Last summer, a few months before the lawsuit by the Firearms Policy Coalition was filed, the legislature passed a law permitting residents to carry handguns without a license or training.
An aerial view of former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S. August 15, 2022.
Marco Bello | Reuters
A federal judge appointed by former President Donald Trump ordered him Tuesday to answer several key questions about his new lawsuit related to the FBI raid on his Florida home, including why her court should be the one hearing the case and to more precisely explain what he wants her to do.
Judge Aileen Cannon also ordered Trump to tell her how his suit affects another pending case involving the same search warrant before a federal magistrate judge in the same court, and whether the Department of Justice has been served with his lawsuit yet.
Cannon also wants to know if Trump is seeking any injunctions related to material seized in the raid until the lawsuit is resolved.
Cannon's order came a day after Trump filed suit in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, asking her to appoint a so-called special master to review documents seized Aug. 8 in the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago resort residence in Palm Beach.
The judge, whom Trump appointed to that court in 2020, gave him and his lawyers until Friday to answer her questions.
Trump wants to block the DOJ from examining the seized documents until a special master looks at them. The step is typically taken when there is a chance that some evidence should be withheld from prosecutors because of various legal privileges.
The DOJ is conducting a criminal investigation related to the documents being removed from the White House when Trump left office in January 2021. By law, presidential records are required to be turned over to the National Archives.
A warrant authorizing the FBI's search-and-seizure operation at Mar-a-Lago shows that the DOJ is probing potential violations of laws related to espionage and obstruction of justice. Multiple sets of documents marked top secret were seized in the raid.
Trump claims the raid was illegal and motivated by a desire to harm his chances of regaining the White House if he decides to run again.
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Cannon in her order Tuesday wrote: "The Court is in receipt of Plaintiff's Motion for Judicial Oversight and Additional Relief."
"To facilitate appropriate resolution, on or before August 26, 2022, Plaintiff shall file a supplement to the Motion further elaborating on the following: (1) the asserted basis for the exercise of this Court's jurisdiction, whether legal, equitable/anomalous, or both; (2) the framework applicable to the exercise of such jurisdiction;" Cannon wrote.
The judge also told Trump's team to detail "the precise relief sought, including any request for injunctive relief pending resolution of the Motion; (4) the effect, if any, of the proceeding before Magistrate Judge Bruce E. Reinhart; and (5) the status of Plaintiff's efforts to perfect service on Defendant."
Reinhart signed the warrant authorizing the raid. He is considering requests by media outlets to unseal an affidavit that the DOJ filed, which laid out the need for the search and events leading up to it.
Earlier Tuesday, the National Archives posted online a letter that said classified material was found in boxes that Trump turned over to that agency in January.
The material, which spans 700 pages, includes ones related to top secret, sensitive compartmented information and special access programs, the National Archives letter said.
