- The Justice Department asked the court to speed up its appeal of the special master appointment.
- In a filing on Friday, prosecutors said their criminal investigation was being hindered.
The Department of Justice is requesting to expedite its appeal of the court's decision to appoint a special master to review the documents recovered at Mar-a-Lago.
In a new filing on Friday, the Justice Department said the special-master review is hindering its criminal investigation into the handling of the documents.
After an earlier court decision, federal prosecutors had only been allowed to access seized documents that had classification markings while the special-master review unfolds. However, prosecutors said they also needed to review the thousands of other documents that had been recovered in order to conduct the investigation, even if they don't pose the same national security concerns as those that were classified.
The Justice Department motion said reviewing the unclassified materials could help them figure out how the classified documents ended up at Mar-a-Lago, among other factors.
Former President Donald Trump requested a special master be appointed after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago residence on August 8 and seized more than a hundred classified docuements. Judge Aileen Cannon granted the request, appointing a special master proposed by Trump's legal team.
Cannon on Thursday granted Trump's lawyers' request to slow the review process after they said the special master's planned schedule was too fast and that they could not find outside vendors to assist with the review on that timeline. Cannon extending its end date from November 30 to December 16.
In its motion on Friday, the Justice Department requested the legal briefings in the special-master appeal be sped up to conclude in mid-November. If the government is ultimately granted its appeal, a decision that will not be made by Cannon, the special-master review could abruptly end.