The Department of Justice dropped its 36-page response to Donald Trump’s demand for a special master to review the boxes of documents recovered from his Florida crash pad and supper club, and the prosecutors did not miss the opportunity to lay out their case.  After an admittedly cursory speed-read of the document, these portions stand out, where the DOJ lawyers essentially say, “He can’t make any claim on the documents because they’re not his.”

[Page 2] Plaintiff’s motion to appoint a special master, enjoin further review of seized materials, and require the return of seized items fails for multiple, independent reasons. As an initial matter, the former President lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to Presidential records because those records do not belong to him. The Presidential Records Act makes clear that “[t]he United States” has “complete ownership, possession, and control” of them. 44 U.S.C. § 2202. Furthermore, this Court lacks jurisdiction to adjudicate Plaintiff’s Fourth Amendment challenges to the validity of the search warrant and his arguments for returning or suppressing the materials seized. For those reasons and others, Plaintiff has shown no basis for the Court to grant injunctive relief. Plaintiff is not likely to succeed on the merits; he will suffer no injury absent an injunction—let alone an irreparable injury; and the harms to the government and the public would far outweigh any benefit to Plaintiff.

[Pages 14-15] But, ‘[i]n order for an owner of property to invoke Rule 41(g), he must show that he had a possessory interest in the property seized by the government.’ … Plaintiff has no property interest in any Presidential records (including classified records) seized from the Premises. The Presidential Records Act provides—under a heading entitled “Ownership of Presidential records”—that ‘[t]he United States shall reserve and retain complete ownership, possession, and control of Presidential records.’ … (the PRA ‘establishes the public ownership of records created by . . . presidents and their staffs in the course of discharging their official duties’ (brackets and internal quotations omitted)). And Presidential Records include any ‘documentary materials’ that were ‘created or received by the President, the President’s immediate staff, or a unit or individual of the Executive Office of the President whose function is to advise or assist the President’ while ‘conducting activities which relate to or have an effect upon the carrying out of the constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties of the President.’