Reaction to the justice department’s filing over Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents came swiftly, and brutally, on Wednesday.
Conservative commentator George Conway, husband of Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, said it was “insanity” that the ex-president’s legal team had gone to a court seeking the appointment of a “special master” to oversee the inquiry, knowing it would likely reveal publicly much of what investigators knew.
“Basically they asked for the justice department to punch them in the face. And that’s what the justice department did in this in this brief,” he told CNN.
“They talk about obstruction… these documents were moved around from room to room. And they actually show us the certification. I don’t think we’ve seen that before, the certification from Trump’s lawyers that said ‘hey, there were no more documents, no more classified documents’ last year in response to a subpoena.
“They certified that’s it: ‘There’s all the responsive documents we have, and it turned out there were no documents anywhere other than in storage rooms.’
“It turned out there were documents at his office. They were documents all over the place, and tons of them. This factual recitation has him dead to rights. There’s just no question about it, and it explains a lot today about why we’re seeing Donald Trump ‘truthing out’ on his social media platform that’s failing. He was basically just freaking out all day and the reason is this.”
The brouhaha over the justice department’s legal filing stems from Donald Trump’s demand for the appointment of an independent “special master” to review materials seized in the FBI raid on his Florida home.
But exactly what is a special master, who would become one, and what would their role be?
Here’s our handy explainer:
Reaction to the justice department’s filing over Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents came swiftly, and brutally, on Wednesday.
Conservative commentator George Conway, husband of Trump’s former senior adviser Kellyanne Conway, said it was “insanity” that the ex-president’s legal team had gone to a court seeking the appointment of a “special master” to oversee the inquiry, knowing it would likely reveal publicly much of what investigators knew.
“Basically they asked for the justice department to punch them in the face. And that’s what the justice department did in this in this brief,” he told CNN.
“They talk about obstruction… these documents were moved around from room to room. And they actually show us the certification. I don’t think we’ve seen that before, the certification from Trump’s lawyers that said ‘hey, there were no more documents, no more classified documents’ last year in response to a subpoena.
“They certified that’s it: ‘There’s all the responsive documents we have, and it turned out there were no documents anywhere other than in storage rooms.’
“It turned out there were documents at his office. They were documents all over the place, and tons of them. This factual recitation has him dead to rights. There’s just no question about it, and it explains a lot today about why we’re seeing Donald Trump ‘truthing out’ on his social media platform that’s failing. He was basically just freaking out all day and the reason is this.”
Before we get stuck into the reaction coming in over last night’s bombshell justice department filing into former president Donald Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office, here’s a look at the 36-page document itself:
BREAKING: DOJ files response to Trump request to appoint a special master to review the materials seized from Mar-a-Lago — t.co/aZWwNDZuai
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) August 31, 2022 Good morning, and welcome to our midweek US politics blog. Anybody tired of Donald Trump news yet?
In a stunning overnight court filing in Florida, the justice department has laid out in great detail their conclusions from the FBI search on the former president’s Palm Beach residence earlier this month that garnered a trove of highly classified documents and government records he had no business having.
Among the remarkable findings: some of the documents were found in Trump’s desk drawer; it was “likely” efforts had been made to move and hide them; Trump’s representatives had falsely asserted all documents were returned to the US government when they hadn’t; and that Trump’s team had obstructed and delayed at every opportunity efforts to retrieve them.
The cherry on the cake, so to speak, was a photograph accompanying the filing, redacted but showing a variety of documents and folders, at least six marked secret or top secret, laid out on the floor of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago mansion.
We’ll have plenty of reaction coming through the day. And to get yourself up to speed, read this account by the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.
Elsewhere today:
Trump’s legal team has until this evening to file a response to the justice department filing, ahead of Florida district court judge Aileen Cannon mulling his request on Thursday for the appointment of an independent “special master” to oversee the investigation.
It’s a quieter day for Joe Biden after his speech in Pennsylvania on Tuesday laying out his Safer America plan on guns and crime, including his declaration to pursue a new federal assault weapons ban. The president has no scheduled public engagements.
Congress is on summer recess. Republicans previously outraged by the FBI raid on Trump’s home have become noticeably quiet.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, will deliver her daily briefing at 2.45pm. She will be asked, but almost certainly deflect, all questions about the justice department filing.
US politicians of a certain age are paying tribute to Mikhail Gorbachev, the former Soviet president and architect of the end of the Cold War who has died aged 91.