Trump Pans DOJ for Appealing Special Master Ruling in ​​FBI Raid Document Case

Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas on Aug. 6, 2022. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday again slammed the ongoing investigation on records that federal agents seized from his Mar-a-Lago home last month, calling the search and seizure a “hoax.”

This came after the Department of Justice (DOJ) on the same day said that it would appeal a Trump-appointed District Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling, which authorizes an independent mediator to review the classified materials, including some marked top secret, recovered from the former president’s Florida residence.

“So now the FBI and Biden Department of ‘Justice’ leakers are going to spend Millions of Dollars, & vast amounts of Time and Energy, to appeal the order on the ‘Raid of Mar-a-Lago document hoax,’ ... instead of fighting the record setting corruption and crime that is taking place right before their very eyes,” he wrote via social media app Truth Social on Sept. 8, praising his appointee as “a brilliant and courageous Judge.”

The former president further weighed in on the Justice Department and former FBI officials including ex-Director James Comey and ex-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

“They leak, lie, plant fake evidence, allow the spying on my campaign, deceive the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Court, RAID, and Break-Into my home, lose documents, and then they ask me, as the 45th President of the United States, to trust them,” Trump said in the following post.

An aerial view of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Steve Helber/AP Photo

Cannon’s 24-Page Mar-a-Lago Order

The FBI searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate on Aug. 8, recovering more than 11,000 government documents and photographs, with 103 documents marked classified. Trump has asked on Aug. 31 a U.S. federal court to block the FBI from reviewing the materials pending the appointment of a special master.

Cannon’s 24-page Mar-a-Lago order granted Trump’s motion on Sept. 5 for a special master to determine what seized materials are protected by attorney-client and executive privilege. She also blocked the government from further reviewing the seized records “for investigative purposes.”

The judge is in the middle of choosing a mediator to assess the seized documents, while the department and Trump’s lawyers have until Friday to submit a list of possible candidates.

The DOJ lawyers had opposed that request, saying the order is problematic because the assessment “cannot be readily segregated” from the DOJ and FBI efforts in connection with the ongoing criminal probe.