DOJ says more than 21,000 pages were seized in Mar-a-Lago search, about one-tenth of what Trump claimed
By Katelyn Polantz, CNN Reporter, Crime and Justice
The Justice Department says the seized documents taken from Mar-a-Lago during the FBI search in August amount to 21,792 pages, according to a court filing this week, far short of the 200,000 pages former President Donald Trump’s legal team had claimed.
Trump’s defense team now has access to these records, the Justice Department told a federal court on Wednesday, as the review of the documents with a third-party special master kicks into gear.
The number of pages that the team will review for possible confidentiality claims is 10 times smaller than what Trump’s team had previously claimed the number of pages was. The collection of nearly 22,000 pages of documents does not include materials seized by the FBI that have already been filtered out for privacy by a team within the Justice Department.
The collection also excludes about 100 documents marked as classified found in the search. The number of pages has not previously been clear, though the Justice Department has maintained there are 11,000 separate documents.
Trump’s team previously tried to say the large volume of seized materials was a reason there was a delay in finding a company to host the electronic data — keeping the special master review process in its nascent stage for weeks. Companies have since been selected.
“The United States of America certifies that it has made available to Plaintiff all of the Seized Materials as required” by the federal district court, prosecutors wrote in a court filing on Wednesday.
Even while the special master review moves forward, the Justice Department continues to challenge the review process in appeals, because it has become a way that Trump’s team has slowed down the Justice Department’s criminal investigation into the handling of records after his presidency and provides an avenue for Trump to try to keep evidence out of investigators’ hands.
The-CNN-Wire
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