Trump says Biden’s DOJ investigation into seized docs is a ‘misguided storage dispute’

According to the Daily Mail, Trump was "pictured smiling" as he went golfing at his Loudoun County, Virginia property Monday morning with an entourage that included his son Eric. Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, "Working today at @TrumpWashingtonDC on the Potomac River. What an incredible place!"

Much of their legal combat centers around a special master set to independently review documents the FBI seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

US District Judge Aileen M. Cannon from the Southern District of Florida appointed a special master on September 5.

On Thursday the DOJ argued that the special master reviewing the material they seized would cause irreparable harm to national security. Trump's team shot back with a 21-page rebuttal on Monday and said the whole matter was over a "misguided storage dispute."

The two sides are also fighting over who will actually serve in the special master role, as both Trump and the DOJ have offered different candidates.

The two sides are also fighting over whether the special master should have the power to consult with US National Archives and Records Administration, the organization that was cited in the affidavit and served as the inciting incident for the raid.

The affidavit states that the investigation began because the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent a referral to the Department of Justice. NARA believed documents were missing from a cache of material Trump sent to the agency.

Trump and Biden's DOJ are also battling over who should foot the special master's bill. Trump offered to split the cost but the DOJ claims Trump should pay for the special master in its entirety.

Trump claimed that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8. Trump was in New York when 30 FBI agents descended upon his Florida property and took several boxes of documents and two passports from his residence.

The former president said the documents that the FBI retrieved from the estate had been declassified through a "standing order" of Trump's that let him take classified materials from the White House to his private residence so he could work out of office.

In their recent argument, Trump's team said he had the power to deem some records as personal and cited a 2000 ruling concerning Bill Clinton.

In that case, Clinton kept audio recordings after he left office which a judge then determined were not subject to the Presidential Records Act, which the DOJ says Trump violated.

The judge who sided with Clinton in 2000 was Amy Berman Jackson, who was the judge in Roger Stone's criminal trial.