Just minutes before a midnight deadline, the Justice Department filed a
stunning response to former President Donald Trump’s request for an
independent review of the documents seized from his Florida home earlier
this month.

The 36-page document is chock-full of previously unknown information,
providing an extensive timeline of how the government worked to recover
classified material before the unprecedented search of Mar-a-Lago. It is
the clearest and most detailed account yet offered of the steps taken
before the search and forcefully rebuts attacks from Trump and his
allies. It going so far to claim that “government records were likely
concealed” from prosecutors and “efforts were likely taken to obstruct
the government’s investigation.”

The DOJ filing says Trump’s request for a special master “is unnecessary
and would significantly harm important governmental interests,”
dismissing it as an attempt to slow down the investigation. It also
claims Trump has no standing to sue because the records belong to the
government, not to him. And, notably, prosecutors placed a photo of some
of the seized documents — strewn across a Mar-a-Lago carpet with their
classified markings plain to see — into the public court record.

Trump and his allies have claimed executive privilege over the
documents, but prosecutors rejected that assertion — arguing that
executive privilege is usually invoked to protect communications from
the legislative or judicial branch, not within the executive branch
itself. The prosecution team, led by DOJ counterintelligence chief Jay
Bratt, also points out that Trump never once asserted executive
privilege or declassified the documents prior to the search.

Kara Tabor is an audio producer for POLITICO Audio.
Raghu Manavalan is the Host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the Executive Producer of POLITICO Audio.