New DOJ filing exposes Trump’s secret objections — and asks special master to call his bluff

The Justice Department, in a filing on Tuesday, revealed objections made by the Trump legal team that the ex-president's lawyers had tried to keep under wraps. Federal Judge Raymond Dearie, the special master tasked with reviewing thousands of documents seized from Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence, earlier this month challenged Trump's lawyers to assert whether or not they endorsed his public claim that the FBI may have "planted" evidence during the search and also to produce evidence for Trump's claim that he had declassified secret national security documents before taking them home. Trump's team apparently responded with objections to Dearie's plan for the special master review, but those were not made public until the Justice Department responded to them in a filing on Tuesday. "Trump's team objects to the Special Master's order requiring them to state whether particular documents are privileged or declassified and provide evidence in support of any claim that a document was declassified," tweeted former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti. The DOJ filing also revealed that Trump's team had trouble finding a vendor to digitize the documents that were seized for the special master review.