and rea mitchell kicking off a special two-hour edition of andrea mitchell reports today. we are in washington as the focus on the classified documents seized from donald trump s mar-a-lago estate is going to shift in the next hour to a courthouse in west palm beach, florida. that s where trump s lawyers and the justice department are clashing over the former president s request for an independent master to go through the stack of files taken from mar-a-lago to see where any might have involved attorney/client privilege. the government says they have already done that and doing it again could harm the investigation. meanwhile the current president is going to be in philadelphia this afternoon into the evening at independence hall delivering a primetime speech on threats to our democracy, what he calls saving the soul of the nation. and another midterm special election win for democrats overnight. alaska voters rejecting former vice presidential candidate sarah palin s bid f
investigators saying this left unchecked, the doj will impugn, leak and publicize selective aspects of their investigation. one of trump s attorneys on fox news last night. they don t understand. something could be marked top secret, could be marked classified. the presidential records act, he would have said this is declassified. it doesn t get a new marking all the time. he s left the office. it is a complete public spectacle. we should note nowhere does it mention the idea of him declassifying any of these documents. in fact, the former president s team agrees in a special master should have top-secret security clearance, but here s the thing. according to dozens of pages of court documents essentially all of the new information that we learned in the last two days, about the former president and his lawyers possibly lying about these documents moving them to keep them hidden s even think pes cher of apparently classified documents found in trump s office, all of tha
records in a secure setting. trump s legal team also aggressively renewed its request for a special master, or a third party, to review the documents that the fbi agents seized, adding left unchecked, the d.o.j. will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for trump but to somehow trust the self restraint of currently unchecked investigators. it goes on, while d.o.j. may have succeeded in taking a partial filter to their rummaged proceeds, the need for a special master remains in place. trump s lawyers insisted that appointing a special master would be a modest step to ensure their access to a detailed inventory of seized material. and allow for independent assessments of attorney-client privilege, and determinations of executive privilege. the justice department opposed trump s request on august 22nd, for a special master. but the u.s. district judge eileen cannon, a trump
his lawyers describe the documents as, quote, his own presidential records. even though the law says they belong to the government. trump s team also argued a special master to review the documents is needed because, quote, left unchecked, the doj will impugn, leak aspects of their investigation with no recourse for movant but to somehow trust no one. the justice department says a special master is unneeded because it would impede the ongoing criminal investigation as well as the intelligence community s assessment. the department said it had evidence of an effort to obstruct the investigation with documents likely concealed or removed before the search took place. with us now to talk about all of this, nbc news justice and intelligence correspondent ken da dilanian and vaughn hilliard,
so i also want to bring in paul butler, former federal prosecutor. paul, in the filing, trump s attorneys wrote in part, quote, left unchecked, the doj will impugn, leak and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no resource for trump but to have the unchecked investigators. when you don t have a defense of the charges, you attack the prosecutor, you attack the investigators. importantly, donald trump has not been charged with any crime. but when you think about this obstruction of justice crime that s listed in the search warrant under and what we ve learned about that since then, trump is not responding. he s still not saying why a federal judge found probable cause to think that mar-a-lago was concealing documents that