It seems Donald Trump and the legal team he’s pegged to represent him in the ongoing and rapidly mounting Mar-a-Lago document scandal can’t quite get on the same page about much of anything — including how the documents got to the ex-president’s resort turned post-White House home, why they were there, if the material was actually declassified by Trump on his way out of the presidency, or even how much material was actually recovered from his Palm Beach compound.
While Trump himself continues to bounce back and forth between his claims that everything he took was declassified and of an unimportant nature and his opposite claims that he didn’t even take that much and everything was planted at his golf club by FBI agents, Donald’s only legal team has now submitted a court filing that sheds some pretty damning light on the sheer volume of documents FBI officials ultimately seized from his Palm Beach estate.
According to the bombshell court filing submitted by Donald Trump’s legal team, they now claim that “closer to 200,000 pages” of government documents were actually seized from the scandal-ridden former president’s country club turned personal residence.
Why are they fessing up to this astronomical number, you may ask?
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Because apparently, Trump Team is struggling hard to find a vendor that can, or will, scan that enormous amount of documents in the time frame allotted by their own hand-picked Special Master.
The court filing was submitted to Judge Raymond Dearie — who was the ultimate “winner” out of the two individuals proposed by the Trump Team to serve as the so-called Special Master that Trump demanded on the case — and featured a desperate plea from Trump attorneys James Trusty, Lindsey Halligan, and Evan Corcoran, who claim it’s just impossible to find a vendor that will even give this monumental task a second glance, much less in time for the deadline set by Dearie.
The desperate court filing reads:
…when Plaintiff’s counsel referred to either 11,000 pages or even 11,000 documents during the status conference (we are still awaiting the transcript), the Government chose not to interject with an accurate number. In conversations between Plaintiff’s counsel and the Government regarding a data vendor, the Government mentioned that the 11,000 documents contain closer to 200,000 pages. That estimated volume, with a need to operate under the accelerated timeframes supported by the Government, is the reason why so many of the Government’s selected vendors have declined the potential engagement. In short, seasoned IT professionals who routinely work on large-scale document productions with the Government cannot meet the Government’s proposed schedule, and it was never realistic for the Government to suggest such a narrow timeframe. Consequently, the Plaintiff respectfully suggests that Your Honor and the parties will be best served by having the retained vendor convey a supportable timeframe for scanning roughly 200,000 pages into a platform, and also provide a breakdown of rollout quantities and proposed deadlines. It would be better to base deadlines on actual data and not wistful claims by the Government.”
To make matters all the more interesting still, the court filing seems to corroborate recent reporting from CNN that claimed pricey Trump attorney Chris Kise has been “sidelined” from the gig of leading the Mar-a-Lago document scandal defense team, despite the fact that Lise was reportedly lured away from his prestigious firm to head up Trump’s legal defense team with a hefty $3 million paycheck. Kise’s name is notably missing from this newest court filing.
Read the full court filing submitted to Judge Dearie by Trump’s legal team here.
Featured image via Political Tribune Gallery
