In a filing submitted to the court last week but unsealed on Monday, the Justice Department asked Trump Mar-a-Lago docs case special master Judge Raymond Dearie to order Donald’s lawyers to submit a sworn affidavit verifying the inventory of the documents seized by the FBI during the August raid on Mar-a-Lago. Shitty federal Judge Aileen Cannon had stepped in and overruled Dearie on a similar order back in September to prevent Team Trump from being cornered into having to admit Donald had in fact stolen classified docs, so it remains to be seen if she’ll do it again.

“Plaintiff Should Be Required to File a Declaration or Affidavit Regarding the Government’s Inventory The Court’s order appointing the Special Master requires the Special Master to ‘verify that the property identified in the ‘Detailed Property Inventory’ [D.E. 39-1] represents the full and accurate extent of the property seized from the premises on August 8, 2022, including, if deemed appropriate, by obtaining sworn affidavits from Department of Justice personnel.’ D.E. 64 at 2 2(a) (bracket in original). The Special Master has received an affidavit of accuracy from the government. Since the Court appointed the Special Master to ensure fairness, integrity, and even-handedness in the review process, see, e.g., D.E. 64 at 1, 19, 22, Plaintiff should be required to verify or correct the property inventory just as the government has done,” the Justice Department lawyers wrote.

On a related note, we nuked an article from earlier on Monday about a separate motion filed by Trump’s lawyers in which they argued he automatically designated all stolen docs as “personal” while still in office. We mischaracterized this as them committing in court to the MAGA media defense that Donald had “automatically declassified” any documents he stole from the White House. For now we’ll maintain that it probably does give some insight into where they’re ultimately going with the criminal defense than might first appear – and specifically to the classified docs – but in absence of more informed analysis by the experts we’ll hold off on where it lands.